warranted her in recognizing in him the possible lover of some
waiting fair one, and it was notorious that she reprobated as worse
than useless--positively demoralizing, in fact--such friendships
between young persons of opposite sexes as held out no earnest of
prospective betrothal, she was confidante-general to half the girls
in the county, and a standing advisory committee of one upon all
points relative to their associations with the beaux of the region.
The latter, on their side, paid their court to the worthy and
influential widow as punctiliously, if not so heartily, as did their
gentle friends. Not that the task was disagreeable. At fifty years
of age, Mrs. Button was plump and comely; her fair curls unfaded,
and still full and glossy; her blue eyes capable of languishing into
moist appreciation of a woful heart-history, or sparkling
rapturously at the news of a triumphant wooing; her little fat hands
were swift and graceful, and her complexion so infantine in its
clear white and pink as to lead many to believe and some--I need
not say of which gender--to practise clandestinely upon the story
that she had bathed her face in warm milk, night and morning, for
forty years. The more sagacious averred, however, that the secret of
her continued youth lay in her kindly, unwithered heart, in her
loving thoughtfulness for others' weal, and her avoidance, upon
philosophical and religions grounds, of whatever approximated the
discontented retrospection winch goes with the multitude by the name
of self-examination.

Our bonnie widow had her foibles and vanities, but the first were
amiable, the latter superficial and harmless, usually rather
pleasant than objectionable. She was very proud, for instance, of
her success in the profession she had taken up, and which she
pursued con amore; very jealous for the reputation for connubial