Wimbledon in her coach and four, the "observed of all observers." 

 Mrs. Mumbles had one fair daughter, Mary Madeline, upon whom she doted with true maternal fondness. This young lady was most perversely inclined to smile upon one Mr. Dick Giblet, a clerk in her father's grocery. Mrs. Mumbles was inconsolable, and Mr. Giblet was banished from the premises, and taken into employ by the firm of Edson & Co., the largest merchants in Wimbledon. 

 Rumor said these gentlemen were so well pleased with the young man, that they had offered him a yearly salary of several hundred dollars, and proposed, should he continue to perform his duties as well as hitherto, to take him into the firm, on his coming of age. Mrs. Salsify now began to regard Dick with different eyes, as what prudent mother would not? She sent Mary Madeline to the store of Edson & Co., whenever she was in want of a spool of cotton or yard of tape; but the young clerk had grown so vain with his elevation, that he looked very loftily down upon her, bowed in the most distant manner, and never exchanged more words with her than were necessary in the buying and selling of an article. So Mary Madeline told her mother, and upbraided her as the cause of the young man's cold treatment. Mrs. Salsify bade her daughter be of good cheer. "'Twas all a feint on Dick's part, to conceal his love till he was sure of hers,—all would come round right in time." But Mary Madeline would not believe it, and said she should die if she had to stay in the back store alone so much, sorting spices and writing labels, for she was constantly thinking of Dick, who used to be with her. She must have something to divert her attention; and, at length, Mrs. Salsify hit upon the project of sending her to school at the seminary one term. It was fitting that the daughter of the rich Mr. Mumbles that was to be, should be possessed of suitable polish and refinement to adorn the high circles in which her position would call her to move. So Miss Mumbles answered to her name among the two hundred scholars, male and female, that had assembled in the halls of Cedar Hill Seminary, for the summer term. Quite a sensation she produced in her gay muslin dress and fiery-colored silk apron; for Mrs. Salsify declared her resolve to dress her tip-top. She was not the woman to half do a thing, when she undertook; she always came up to the mark, or went a little beyond. Better overshoot than fall short, was her motto. And when Mary Madeline came home, on the evening of her debut at the seminary, walking between the two young lady boarders, Amy Seaton and Jenny Andrews, Mrs. Mumbles could not avoid drawing a comparison between the three; and her daughter 

 Prev. P 16/360 next