was the actual owner of certain three per cents, that brought twelve hundred a year, as if she did not own a ‘copper,’ as it was the fashion of that period to say,’cents’ being then very little, if at all, used.  Nor did he know anything of the farm she had inherited from her mother, or of the store in town, that brought three hundred and fifty more in rent.  It is true that some allusions were made to these matters by Doctor Yardley, in his angry comments on the Woolston family generally, Anne always excepted, and in whose flavour he made a salvo, even in the height of his denunciations.  Still.  Mark thought so much of that which was really estimable and admirable in Bridget, and so little of anything mercenary, that even after these revelations he could not comprehend the causes of Doctor Yardley’s harsh treatment of him.  During the whole scene, which was purposely enacted in the presence of his wondering and trembling daughter, Mark behaved perfectly well.  He had a respect for the Doctor’s years, as well as for Bridget’s father, and would not retort.  After waiting as long as he conceived waiting could be of any use, he seized his hat, and left the room with an air of resentment that Bridget construed into the expression of an intention never to speak to any of them again.  But Mark Woolston was governed by no such design, as the sequel will show.

Chapter II.

“She’s not fourteen.” 
“I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth,
And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four,—­
She is not fourteen.”—­

Romeo and Juliet.

Divine wisdom has commanded us to “Honour your father and your mother.”  Observant travellers affirm that less respect is paid to parents in America, than is usual in Christian nations—­we say Christian nations; for many of the heathen, the Chinese for instance, worship them, though probably with an allegorical connection that we do not understand.  That the parental tie is more loose in this country than in most others we believe, and there is a reason to be found for it in the migratory habits of the people, and in the general looseness in all the ties that connect men with the past.  The laws on the subject of matrimony, moreover, are so very lax, intercourse is so simple and has so many facilities, and the young of the two sexes are left so much to themselves, that it is no wonder children form that connection so often without reflection and contrary to the wishes of their friends.  Still, the law of God is there, and we are among those who believe that a neglect of its mandates is very apt to bring its punishment, even in this world, and we are inclined to think that much of that which Mark and Bridget subsequently suffered, was in consequence of acting directly in the face of the wishes and injunctions of their parents.