ersistent on the brightest side.

ALLAN MUNIER.

THE FUTURE MRS. THORNTON

By SARAH GUERNSEY BRADLEY

From a worldly point of view there could be no question as to the
wisdom and desirability of the match, and Miss Warren's family was
worldly to the core.

It had been a crushing blow to Mrs. Warren's pride, and, incidentally,
a blow in a vastly more material direction, that her two older
daughters had made something of a mess of matrimony, pecuniarily
speaking.

She was confessedly ambitious for Nancy--Nancy, the youngest, the
cleverest, the fairest of the three. Position she always _would_ have,
being a Warren, but she wanted the girl to have all the _other_ good
things of this life, that for so many years had been unsatisfied
desires. Not, _of course_, that she would want Nancy to marry for
money, she assured herself virtuously; that, in addition to being an
indirect violation of an article of the Decalogue, was so distinctly
plebeian. But it would be so comfortable if Nancy's affections could
only be engaged in a direction where the coffers were not exactly
empty. In other words, money would be no _obstacle_ to perfect
connubial bliss.

And think of the future which awaited Nancy if she would but say the
word! Even the fondly cherished memory of the Warrens' past glory
dwindled into nothingness in comparison.

To be sure, Mr. James Thornton was not so young as he _had_ been ten
years ago--"What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all," Mrs.
Warren was fond of quoting--nor, in point of girth, did he assume
_less_ aldermanic proportions as time rolled on, but there was such a
golden lining to these small clouds of affliction, that he was very
generally looked upon as an altogether desirable _parti_.

It must be admitted that, among other minor idiosyncrasies, Mr. James
Thornton would now and then slip into the vernacular. Under great
stress of feeling, in the heat of argument and the like, he had been
known to break the Sixth Commandment in so far as the English of the
king was concerned.

"You was," "those kind," "between you and I," would slip out, but
these variations from the strictly conventional were looked upon as
little eccentricities in which a man whose fortune went far above the
million mark could well afford to indulge.

"James is so droll," the aristocratic Mrs. Warren would say
comfortably, resolutely closing her eyes to the fact that J