things brighter. Perhaps she would have painted, like Miss Ruth; and
I have no doubt she would have been an excellent housekeeper. We
should have just lived quietly here, she and I, and I need never have
thought"--Mr. Denner flushed faintly in the firelight--"of marriage."

Mr. Denner's mind had often traveled as far as this; he had even gone to
the point of saying to himself that he wished one of the Misses Woodhouse
would regard him with sentiments of affection, and he and Willie, free
from Mary, could have a home of their own, instead of forlornly envying
the rector and Henry Dale.

But Mr. Denner had never said which Miss Woodhouse; he had always thought
of them, as he would have expressed it, "collectively," nor could he have
told which one he most admired,--he called it by no warmer name, even to
himself.

But as he sat here alone, and remembered the pleasant evening he had had,
and watched his fire smoulder and die, and heard the soft sigh of the
rising wind, he reached a tremendous conclusion. He would make up his
mind. He would decide which of the Misses Woodhouse possessed his deeper
regard. "Yes," he said, as he lifted first one foot and then the other
over the fender, and, pulling his little coat-tails forward under his
arms, stood with his back to the fireplace,--"yes, I will make up my
mind; I will make it up to-morrow. I cannot go on in this uncertain way.
I cannot allow myself to think of Miss Ruth, and how she would paint
her pictures, and play my accompaniments, and then find my mind on Miss
Deborah's dinners. It is impracticable; it is almost improper. To-morrow
I will decide."

To have reached this conclusion was to have accomplished a great deal.