BY JAMES H. DANA.
All the girls in Flowervale were in love with Harry Vernon. That is to say, they admired him excessively, and were ready to fall in love, if he should lead the way. Fanny Somers, the little witch, was the only exception. Merry, dancing and pretty as a fairy, it was a question whether she had ever yet thought of love: if she had, she never talked of it.
Harry's father was a Senator in Congress, and he himself was a young lawyer of brilliant talents, finished education and handsome fortune. It was known that his father wished him to^ marry, and did not, as is often the case, insist on his selecting an heiress. The now grey-haired statesman had made a love-match in his youth, and still worshipped the memory of the wife he had too early lost. "Let your heart choose, my son," he said. "Marriage, without true affection, holds out but a poor show for happiness."
Most of those, not directly interested in the event, thought that Isabel Fortescue would carry off the prize. She was decidedly the belle of the village. Having received her education at a fashionable seminary, there was scarcely an accomplishment of which she could not boast. Besides, the families of Vernon and Fortescue had been the leading ones in the county for two generations; and gossips said that the union of the two fortunes, and of the united influence, would give Harry a position almost unrivalled.
Certain it is that Harry visited Isabel very often. Those who envied her accused her of manoeuvring to win him. "Throws herself in his way continually," said one. "Did ever any body," cried another, "see a girl make love so bare-facedly?"
"She ought to get him, Fm sure," sneered another, "for she has tried hard enough." Nevertheless, as honest chroniclers, we must record the fact, that some of these very young ladies, such is the infirmity of human nature, did their very prettiest to out-manoeuvre Isabel and get Harry for themselves.
Harry had not seen Fanny since she was a child. It was only a month since she had left school, and returned home again; and the first time she joined in the village social circle was at a pic-nic. Here her blooming complexion, graceful figure and ringing laugh had been the theme of admiration by the beaux, the envy of the belles. Harry had been her partner in a dance or two, and, in common with others, felt it would be only civil to call upon her. So the morning after the party he sallied forth to make the round of the village girls.
He first visited Isabel. She was reclining in a fauteuil, charmingly dressed, and reading a novel. All she could talk about was her fatigue. Yet she looked bewitchingly, it was incontestable, in the subdued light of that sumptuous parlor, with elegant pictures on the walls, bouquets of flowers all about, and an atmosphere of exquisite refinement around. Never had Harry felt so much tempted to be in love. He staid nearly an hour, when he had intended to stop for only a few minutes; and would not, perhaps, have gone then, if other gentlemen had not dropt in.
From Isabel's he went to several other houses. Everywhere he found the young ladies dressed to receive company. Some were reading novels; some had a book of poetry open before them; and one, who had a pretty hand, was coquettishly knitting a purse. Not one of them appeared to have anything serious to do. Most of them affected, like Isabel, to be quite languid, and talked as if the fatigue of the day before had nearly killed them.
When Harry reached the pretty, but unpretending cottage, where Fanny resided with her widowed mother, he found the hall door opened to admit the breeze, and so, just tapping at the parlor entrance, he entered bowing. In the shaded light of the cool, fragrant room, he could not, for a moment, see; but he noticed immediately that no one answered his . salutation; and, directly, he beheld that the apartment was empty. Just then, however, a fresh, liquid voice, as merry as a bird's in June, was heard warbling in an inner apartment. Harry listened awhile charmed, but finding that his knocking was not; heard, and recognizing, as he thought, Fanny's vj)ice, finally made bold to go in search of the singer. Passing down the hall, and through : another open door, he suddenly found himself; in the kitchen, a large, airy apartment, scrupulously clean, with Fanny, at the end opposite to ; him, standing before a dough-trough, kneading flour and carolling like a lark.
