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Why, sir," said she, waxing warm,

"this child is n't fit to

take care of you, this twelve-month. She has never made a loaf of bread. I doubt whether she would get you up a decent dinner. She has not yet looked into the mysteries of starch and smoothing-irons. She sometimes makes a little cake, or pastry, but she would not know when her oven was hot, or her pies baked. She'd make fifty mistakes a week. You can't think of it. Take my advice, and leave her under my hand a year. I'll engage to turn her out a good house-keeper. Very important, Mr. Vernon, for a minister to have a wife that knows how."

"O," said he, quite unmoved, "this thing comes from good judgment and observation. Mary, having had so good an example before her eyes, will go on as if by instinct. I have no fear about that."

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Well, how should you know anything about it? She ought to know that it is one thing to see others go on right, and quite another to undertake herself alone. It's the practice she wants. She might remember how some things are done at home, but she must do them with her own hands to know how."

"Well, suppose that, considering her home-advantages, I am willing to run the risk of it; and that she consents to begin under this disadvantage, to save the inconvenience and trouble?"

A quick reply was forthcoming, when the doctor laid his hand on his daughter Harriet's shoulder, and told her that "the thing being decided, we have only to make the best of it. Besides, you are a little in fault here. You have been overindulgent to Mary, or she would not be found, at eighteen, quite so ignorant of domestic matters as your words imply. I believe, however, she has no foolish prejudice against this class of duties. Her inexperience may cause her some discomfort,

but she will, without doubt, acquire skill. I foresee I must spare you, to begin with her and set her out straight.”

These words had a very lubricating effect, and Miss Allison —for she was a very energetic person-entered warmly into certain plans and arrangements in reference to the important era so near at hand. She even listened with silent attention to Mr. Vernon's history of his measures to secure a house in Salem, and to his expressed purpose to take possession by the middle of November, allowing two weeks only for a wedding tour. But, though silent, she was not meanwhile inactive. Her fertile brain was busy in projecting, computing and devising,-maintaining its equipoise 'mid such an influx of heterogeneous materials as fill out the elaborate advertisement of some dry goods and grocery establishment," and as would totally inundate and overset a less evenly-balanced mind.

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. Mary, who always has a thought for others, finds time to inquire after a poor, sick. woman, whom Edward in his last letter spoke of visiting; also, if there were any new developments in the religious character of Esquire Lewis' daughters, about whom the young pastor had expressed some solicitude. She learns that Widow Harrison is still spared to pray, and that the Misses Lewis continue attentive to the externals of a Christian life. Perhaps he has wronged them by his doubt. He should think of expressing it to no one but his other self.

The evening had passed rapidly on near to the midnight hour, as Miss Allison gave her last look at the preparations for early breakfast, and hastened toward her chamber. She thought herself the last to retire; but, as she stepped into the hall, a light was burning in the library, and her father was sitting just as Mary had left him, a half hour since, with her good-night kiss. He looked absorbed and anxious. She uttered an exclamation of surprise that he had not gone to his room, and added, "This sudden marriage troubles you, father. Well, I do not wonder. Mary seems to us a mere child;

and she is too young. account."

We may well have some fears on her

"Yes, Harriet; I would rather she were two years older; but then she is plastic, and will be the more easily assimilated to her new sphere and relationships. Her youth, on the whole, does not much disturb me. I was thinking of him,-of Edward; he is very sensitive, somewhat morbidly so, I judge."

"I havn't noticed it. He always seems to take in good part my plain way of speaking. He was cool enough to-night, when I spoke so warmly against his plans. I think you must judge from the bumps;—he has rather a peculiar head.”

"No; I am more of a physiognomist, you know; and his face is quite a study. I cannot be mistaken in the full, humid eye, pensive in repose; the finely-curved, full, flexible lip, tremulous with every changing emotion; in the reaction that follows every flush of excited feeling. I feel it, too, when conversing with him, in his quick detection and discrimination of my own varying shades of emotion. I am often unconscious of some variation of feeling till he responds to it by the curl of his lip, or the flash of his eye. He is like a thermometer— up or down with the atmosphere. I wish, for his own sake and for Mary's, that his sensibilities were less exquisite."

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a nature.

Why, Mary is just the one to sympathize with such You have always said she had a world of sensibility. She will understand him, and feel for him. I should n't worry about that;" and she turned away with a "Good night."

"Feel for him! yes, and with him-too exquisitely, I fear for her own happiness. But that I must trust to her best Friend!" and in his heart he folded his darling the more closely, and, with his blessing on her, struggled up the unspoken, yet fervent wish, O, that I could enfold thee here, while I live, and shield thee thus from the roughnesses of life!"

CHAPTER V.

"A prize to be contested by the skill
Of mothers and their daughters."

"My son, of muckle speaking ill advised,
And where a little speaking had sufficed,

Cometh muckle harm. This was told me and taught me―
In muckle speaking, sinning wanteth not."

"Rumour, in temporary things, is gigantic."

THE young pastor returned to Salem, to find his secret known, and his usually quiet parish in somewhat of a ferment.

In

Esther Ann Brooks, the milliner, had been to the city for the fall fashions, and come home with important news. the shop where she traded was an apprentice, lately come from Plympton, who had a sister doing housework in Mayfield, an adjoining town. She lived close by Dr. Allison's, and knew of his daughter's engagement to the Salem minister. She had been home on a visit, and, for want of other topics, had detailed this latest news from Mayfield; exhausting all that was known and conjectured, and drawing on her imagination for enough to fill out a good story. The shop-girl remembered the Salem milliner, and laid up the precious piece of gossip till she should see her at No. 7 Blonde-street.

Finding Esther Ann with both ears open, she imparted all she had received, with her own speculations thereon. By the time the ball had rolled on to Salem it was grown quite formidable in size, with its small admixture of truth very ingeniously distributed throughout its staple commodity, exaggeration and error.

Esther Anne's little brown shop was now the centre of

attraction, not so much on account of its new millinery as of the information there dispensed on the subject of the young minister's "matrimonials." Almost every one was taken by surprise. Some, who had benevolently selected for him, were not a little piqued. A few, who had still nearer hopes, sighed as they were thus dashed at a single stroke.

Esquire Lewis's daughters were among the first that called, and they were not easily suited in the choice of bonnets. One after another was examined and rejected, being used as foils to hide their excessive interest in the one topic on which they resolved to pump Miss Brooks dry.

"You are sure this report is true?"

"Yes, I am sure of it [that bonnet, Miss Lucretia, is a good fit], for the girl said her sister saw him every time he came. He has visited her ever since last June [there, the brim wants raising a little. I can lap it under the crown]. He met her first away from home-somewhere she was visiting; that time he was gone so long, you remember."

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[Let me look at that drawn silk]. What did you hear of the family, Esther Ann?"

"Well, as good as any in Mayfield; hold their heads pretty high, I guess [that white straw, Miss Helen, will look sweetly on you]. The girl said, her sister said, she heard the gentleman where she lived say, that the doctor was a clever man, and the girl well enough; but he had a son in New York [the price of that is three dollars]—a half-brother of hers in New York was a slippery kind of a man- -lived in dashing style. If his debts were paid he would n't own a cent." "[I don't quite like this white straw, Esther Ann]. What more did you hear of the young lady herself?"

"[Try this French lace.] Not much, except what I told you. She's young and pretty; has always been kept at school [there, that's a complete fit. Just look in the glass]."