this token of love to the simple boy.

Number 6, however, was an exception to former passions--Francis Bell was
the most faithful of lovers. When his time arrived to go to college, and
it became necessary to acquaint Mr. Coacher of the arrangements that had
been made, the latter cried, "God bless my soul, I hadn't the least idea
what was going on;" as was indeed very likely, for he had been taken in
three times before in precisely a similar manner; and Francis went to the
University resolved to conquer honours, so as to be able to lay them at
the feet of his beloved Martha.

This prize in view made him labour prodigiously. News came, term after
term, of the honours he won. He sent the prize-books for his college
essays to old Coacher, and his silver declamation cup to Miss Martha. In
due season he was high among the Wranglers, and a fellow of his college;
and during all the time of these transactions a constant tender
correspondence was kept up with Miss Coacher, to whose influence, and
perhaps with justice, he attributed the successes which he had won.

By the time, however, when the Rev. Francis Bell, M.A., and Fellow and
Tutor of his College, was twenty-six years of age, it happened that Miss
Coacher was thirty-four, nor had her charms, her manners, or her temper
improved since that sunny day in the springtime of life when he found her
picking peas in the garden. Having achieved his honours he relaxed in the
ardour of his studies, and his judgment and tastes also perhaps became
cooler. The sunshine of the pea-garden faded away from Miss Martha, and
poor Bell found himself engaged--and his hand pledged to that bond in a
thousand letters--to a coarse, ill-tempered, ill-favoured, ill-mannered,
middle-aged woman.