To try to throw off his depression and discouragement, he had gone around last evening to call on Fanny Winthrop, who was studying at Radcliffe this year and staying on Mount Vernon Street. She sent her love to her "dear Miss Standish," and if I had any message to send in return he would be happy to carry it, as he and she were to act in "The Loan of a Lover," and he was likely to see a good deal of her in the course of the next week or two. This letter has relieved my mind greatly. It is evident that Ben's heart is built like a modern ship, in compartments, so that though one bulkhead suffers wreck, the vessel may still come safe to a matrimonial haven. Fanny Winthrop is a plain little girl with a round face and the traditional student spectacles; but a merry pair of dimples twinkling with a fund of cheery humor, and then--a Winthrop! That will please his mother, I am sure. But I am no matchmaker. I never think of such things unless they are forced upon me, as they have been lately. The other letter on my desk was from Philip Brady. I had missed his call that last evening in New York. He writes, as if it were a surprising piece of information, that he is going to marry Nora Costello, provided she can gain the consent of her superior officers, and he delegates to me the pleasant duty of breaking the news to his family circle. "This," he says, "will be easy for you who have known Nora, and who were the first to discover her charm and the solid merit which goes so much deeper than charm." Here is a pretty state of things! What am I to do? I can see Cousin John's face when he hears the words "Salvation Army." He has always scoffed and scolded and sworn at the mere mention of the business, and his opinions are very "sot," as the Oldbury farmers say. He is, in fact, the only obstinate member of our family; but I will let him know that he cannot talk down Susan Standish. I mean to go right over to his house after dinner and have it out with him. I shall tell him that Nora Costello is a daughter-in-law to be proud of (as she is), and that I dare say, if he wishes it, she will leave the Salvation Army (which she never will); that, at any rate, he must send for the girl to come on to visit him; that if he does not, _I_ shall; and that I heartily approve the match. I call myself a truthful woman, and the proof of it is that when I do start out to tell a lie, it is a good honest one, not a deft little evasion such as runs trippingly from the tongue of practised deceivers. I suppose the news of Philip's engagement will be spread all over town before night. I feel now as though I should not object to a little of that indifference to the affairs of one's neighbors which I found so depressing when I was in New York. Not that I am any less loyal to Oldburyport; if anything, I have grown more loyal than ever.