lately from Templeton?"

Aristabulus drew his breath, and recovered enough of his ordinary
tone of manner to reply with a decent regard to his character for
self-command. The intimacy that he had intended to establish on the
spot, was temporarily defeated, it is true, and without his exactly
knowing how it had been effected; for it was merely the steadiness of
the young lady, blended as it was with a polished reserve, that had
thrown him to a distance he could not explain. He felt immediately,
and with taste that did his sagacity credit, that his footing in this
quarter was only to be obtained by unusually slow and cautious means.
Still, Mr. Bragg was a man of great decision, and, in his way, of
very far-sighted views; and, singular as it may seem, at that
unpropitious moment, he mentally determined that, at no very distant
day, he would make Miss Eve Effingham his wife.

"I hope Mr. Effingham enjoys good health," he said, with some such
caution as a rebuked school-girl enters on the recitation of her
task--"he enjoyed bad health I hear, (Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, though
so shrewd, was far from critical in his modes of speech) when he went
to Europe, and after travelling so far in such bad company, it would
be no more than fair that he should have a little respite as he
approaches home and old age."

Had Eve been told that the man who uttered this nice sentiment, and
that too in accents as uncouth and provincial as the thought was
finished and lucid, actually presumed to think of her as his bosom
companion, it is not easy to say which would have predominated in her
mind, mirth or resentment. But Mr. Bragg was not in the habit of
letting his secrets escape him prematurely, and certainly this was