sure of it, may it even not be so? Selma was content to have it so,
especially as the assertion did not jar with her own prepossessions; and
thus they rode home in the summer night in the mutual contentment of a
betrothal.



CHAPTER II.


The match was thoroughly agreeable to Mrs. Farley, Selma's aunt and
nearest relation, who with her husband presided over a flourishing
poultry farm in Wilton. She was an easy-going, friendly spirit, with a
sharp but not wide vision, who did not believe that a likelier fellow
than Lewis Babcock would come wooing were her niece to wait a lifetime.
He was hearty, comical, and generous, and was said to be making money
fast in the varnish business. In short, he seemed to her an admirable
young man, with a stock of common-sense and high spirits eminently
serviceable for a domestic venture. How full of fun he was, to be sure!
It did her good to behold the tribute his appetite paid to the buckwheat
cakes with cream and other tempting viands she set before him--a
pleasing contrast to Selma's starveling diet--and the hearty smack with
which he enforced his demands upon her own cheeks as his mother-in-law
apparent, argued an affectionate disposition. Burly, rosy-cheeked,
good-natured, was he not the very man to dispel her niece's vagaries and
turn the girl's morbid cleverness into healthy channels?

Selma, therefore, found nothing but encouragement in her choice at home;
so by the end of another three months they were made man and wife, and
had moved into that little house in Benham which had attracted Babcock's