as a token of the affection he bore her, and which he certainly
would enlarge were it not that Mrs. Roger Potter yet lived, and was
hale and hearty. The widow blushed for once, saying as she did so,
that there was a time when such a compliment would not have been
lost upon her, but now that she had got on the wrong side of forty,
was getting gray, and had seen three dear good husbands put away in
the grave, she did not think it right to be "lookin' out,"
especially as Parson Stebbins had always said, when he looked in,
that woman's worldly thoughts ought to end at forty.

My suspicions of the major's probity were now almost confirmed, for
when she offered to vouchsafe him her generosity, by frying a piece
of the fish for dinner, he expressed a positive preference for
bacon, a good flitch of which he saw in a little cupboard she opened
in search of her stew pan. And although he expressed it a stain upon
his gallantry to deprive her of even an ounce, I thought the
quality and not his gallantry stood in the way. "Lord bless you,
Mrs. Trotbridge," said the major, "men distinguished in arms never
make presents to eat of them."

The good hostess replied, by saying, she might have known, but it
was seldom persons so distinguished came that way; and when they
did, she entertained them just for the honor of it. Peace, she said,
reigned in her little house, and she was more happy with the thought
of eating the bread of honesty, so remotely, than she would be with
a palace in the olive groves of Cordova the man who lectured told
about, seeing that they who live in palaces must depend upon others
for bread, while she could raise her own.