"I don't want them ever to be proposed," said Armorer, gloomily.

"I know you always said you didn't want Esther to marry; but I
thought if she fell in love with the right man--we know that marriage
is a very happy estate, sometimes, Horatio!" She sighed again.
In her case it was only the memory of happiness, for Colonel Ellis
had been dead these twelve years; but his widow mourned him still.

"If you marry the right one, maybe," answered Armorer, grudgingly;
"but see here, Meg, Esther is different from the other girls;
they got married when Jenny was alive to look after them,
and I knew the men, and they were both big matches, you know.
Then, too, I was so busy making money while the other girls grew
up that I hadn't time to get real well acquainted with them.
I don't think they ever kissed me, except when I gave them a check.
But Esther and I ----" he drummed with his fingers on the boards,
his thin, keen face wearing a look that would have amazed his business
acquaintances--"you remember when her mother died, Meg? Only fifteen,
and how she took hold of things! And we have been together ever since,
and she makes me think of her grandmother and her mother both.
She's never had a wish I knew that I haven't granted--why, d---- it!
I've bought my clothes to please her ----"

"That's why you are become so well-dressed, Horatio; I wondered
how you came to spruce up so!" interrupted Mrs. Ellis.

"It has been so blamed lonesome whenever she went to visit you,
but yet I wouldn't say a word because I knew what a good time she had;
but if I had known that there was a confounded, long-legged, sniffy young