BY ORPHEUS C. KERR.




CHAPTER IX.


BALKS IN A BRUSH.


FLORA, having no relations in the world that she knew of, had, ever
since her seventh new bonnet, known no other home than Macassar Female
College, in the Alms-House, and regarded Miss CAROWTHERS as her
mother-in-lore. Her memory of her own mother was of a lady-like person
who had swiftly waisted away in the effort to be always taken for her
own daughter, and was, one day, brought down-stairs, by her husband, in
two pieces, from tight lacing. The sad separation (taking place just
before a party of pleasure), had driven FLORA'S father into a frenzy of
grief for his better halves; which was augmented to brain fever by Mr.
SCHENCK, who, having given a Boreal policy to deceased, felt it his duty
to talk gloomily about wives who sometimes died apart after receiving
unmerited cuts from their husbands, and to suggest a compromise of ten
per cent, upon the amount of the policy, as a much more cheerful
settlement than a coroner's inquest. FLORA'S betrothal had grown out of
the soothing of Mr. POTTS'S last year of mental disorder by Mr. DROOD,
an old partner in the grocery business, who, too, was a widower from his
wife's use of arsenic and lead for her complexion. The two bereaved
friends, after comparing tears and looking mournfully at each other's