sweetheart.

"Confound that fellow!" muttered Bartram, "he's in my way wherever I
move. I've heard too much of him in the stores and the courts and
everywhere else that I have been obliged to go. I have to hear of him
at the residence of my own sweetheart whenever I call there, and now I
find Eleanor herself, who has never been able to endure any of the
commoner specimens of humanity, apparently taking up the cudgels in his
defence. I wish I could understand the fascination that fellow exerts
over a number of people so much better than himself. Hang it! I am
going to find out. He is a fool, if ever there was one, and I am not.
If I can't get at the secret of it, it will be the first time that I
have ever been beaten in examining and cross-examining such a common
specimen of humanity."

Thus speaking, the lawyer crossed the street and entered the shop, but,
to his disgust, found both the cobbler's sons there with their father.
The boys, with a curiosity common to all very young people, and
particularly intense among the classes who have nothing in particular
to think of, stared at him so fixedly that he finally rose abruptly and
departed without saying a word. The boys went out soon after, and Billy
remarked to Tom, as the two sauntered homeward,--

"Tom, what do you s'pose is the reason that feller comes in to see dad
so much?"

"Gettin' a pair of shoes made, I s'pose," said Tom, sulkily, for he had
just failed in an attempt to extract a quarter of a dollar from his
father.