"Shall I send it, Miss Eudosia; or don't you like to trust it out of your sight?" "Not yet, sir. To own the truth, I have not so much money. I only came out to buy a few trifles, and brought but fifty dollars with me; and Pa insists on having no bills. I never knew any body as particular as Pa; but I will go instantly home and show him the importance of this purchase. You will not let the handkerchief be seen for ONE hour--only ONE hour--and then you shall hear from me." To this Bobbinet assented. The young lady tripped into her carriage, and was instantly whirled from the door. In precisely forty-three minutes, a maid entered, half out of breath, and laid a note on the counter. The latter contained Mr. Halfacre's check for one hundred dollars, and a request from the fair Eudosia that I might be delivered to her messenger. Every thing was done as she had desired, and, in five minutes, I was going up Broadway as fast as Honor O'Flagherty's (for such was the name of the messenger) little dumpy legs could carry me. CHAPTER X. Mr. Henry Half acre was a speculator in town-lots--a profession that was, just then, in high repute in the city of New York. For farms, and all the more vulgar aspects of real estate, he had a sovereign contempt; but offer him a bit of land that could be measured by feet and inches, and he was your man. Mr. Halfacre inherited nothing; but he was a man of what are called energy and enterprise. In other words, he had a spirit for running in debt, and never shrunk from jeoparding property that, in truth, belonged to his creditors. The very morning that his eldest child, Eudosia, made her valuable acquisition, in my person, Henry Halfacre, Esq., was the owner of several hundred lots on the island of Manhattan; of one hundred and twenty-three in the city of Brooklyn; of nearly as many in Williamsburg; of large undivided interests in Milwaukie, Chicago, Rock River, Moonville, and other similar places; besides owning a considerable part of a place called Coney Island. In a word, the landed estate of Henry Halfacre, Esq., "inventoried," as he expressed it, just two millions, six hundred and twelve thousand dollars; a handsome sum, it must be confessed, for a man who, when he began his beneficent and energetic career in this branch of business, was just twenty-three thousand, four hundred and seventeen dollars worse than nothing. It is true, that there was some drawback on all this prosperity; Mr. Halfacre's bonds, notes, mortgages, and other liabilities, making a sum total that amounted to the odd six hundred thousand dollars; this still left him, however, a handsome paper balance of two millions.