Bad Hugh

"He'll hardly fail of making a good match now," Miss Eudora remarked,

caressing the pet spaniel which had climbed into her lap. "I think we

must manage to visit Saratoga or some of those places next summer. Mr.

Gardner found his wife at Newport, and they say she's worth half a

million."

"But horridly ugly," and Anna looked up from the reverie in which she

had been indulging. "Lottie says she has tow hair and a face like a

fish. John would never be happy with such a wife."

"Possibly you think he had better have married that sewing girl about

whom he wrote us just before going to Europe," Miss Eudora said

spitefully, pinching the long silken ears of her pet until the animal

yelled with pain.

There was a faint sigh from the direction of Anna's chair, and all knew

she was thinking of the missionary.

The mother continued: "I trust he is over that fancy, and ready to thank me for the strong letter I wrote him."

"Yes, but the girl," and Anna leaned her white cheek in her whiter hand.

"None of us know the harm his leaving her may have done. Don't you

remember he wrote how much she loved him--how gentle and confiding her

nature was, and how to leave her then might prove her ruin?"

"Our little Anna is growing very eloquent upon the subject of sewing

girls," Miss Asenath said, rather scornfully, and Anna rejoined: "I am not sure she was a sewing girl. He spoke of her as a schoolgirl."

"But it is most likely he did that to mislead us," said the mother. "The

only boarding school he knows anything about is the one where Lottie

was. If he were not her uncle by marriage I should not object to Lottie

as a daughter," was the next remark, whereupon there ensued a

conversation touching the merits and demerits of a certain Lottie

Gardner, whose father had taken for a second wife Miss Laura Richards.

This Laura had died within a year of her marriage, but Lottie had

claimed relationship to the family just the same, grandmaing Mrs.

Richards and aunty-ing the sisters. John, however, was never called

uncle, except in fun. He was too near her age, the young lady frequently

declaring that she had half a mind to throw aside all family ties and

lay siege to the handsome young man, who really was very popular with

the fair sex. During this discussion of Lottie, Anna had sat listlessly

looking up and down the columns of an old Herald, which Dick, Eudora's

pet dog, had ferreted out from the table and deposited at her feet.