of another parson, who had acted as Mr. Bell's own private tutor in
Bell's early life, and it was whilst under Mr. Coacher's roof, indeed,
and when only a boy of seventeen or eighteen years of age, that the
impetuous young Bell had flung himself at the feet of Miss Martha
Coacher, whom he was helping to pick peas in the garden. On his knees,
before those peas and her, he pledged himself to an endless affection.

Miss Coacher was by many years the young fellow's senior and her own
heart had been lacerated by many previous disappointments in the
matrimonial line. No less than three pupils of her father had trifled
with those young affections. The apothecary of the village had despicably
jilted her. The dragoon officer, with whom she had danced so many many
times during that happy season which she passed at Bath with her gouty
grandmamma, one day gaily shook his bridle-rein and galloped away never
to return. Wounded by the shafts of repeated ingratitude, can it be
wondered at that the heart of Martha Coacher should pant to find rest
somewhere? She listened to the proposals of the gawky gallant honest boy,
with great kindness and good-humour; at the end of his speech she said,
"Law, Bell, I'm sure you are too young to think of such things;" but
intimated that she too would revolve them in her own virgin bosom. She
could not refer Mr. Bell to her mamma, for Mr. Coacher was a widower, and
being immersed in his books, was of course unable to take the direction
of so frail and wondrous an article as a lady's heart, which Miss Martha
had to manage for herself.

A lock of her hair, tied up in a piece of blue ribbon, conveyed to the
happy Bell the result of the Vestal's conference with herself. Thrice
before had she snipt off one of her auburn ringlets, and given them away.
The possessors were faithless, but the hair had grown again: and Martha
had indeed occasion to say that men were deceivers when she handed over