Letty soon found that there was a determination in the female magnates of the village to crush her rising into any importance among them. But the spirit of the girl rose with the occasion. In a short time it became generally known that she was to be kept at a distance by the village fashionables. What cared she? Her father had accumulated a snug little competency, and few girls in the neighborhood would be as well dowered as Letty. On this she was allowed to draw as she pleased. New and tasty furniture adorned the best “sitting-room,” and Letty’s brilliant performance on by far the best piano in the village, caused many a hasty step to loiter on its way, as it passed the tailor’s door. Nor were the listeners confined to the outside of the house, for within were frequently found all the “most desirable” young men, who showed a decided preference for Letty’s fine music and lively conversation, to the more dignified, but less agreeable assemblages of the exclusives of the place. Nor abroad did she attract less admiration than at home, and envy itself was at length compelled to confess that Letty Rawdon was by far the best dressed and most stylish girl in the village. As a natural consequence, suitors followed. Phil Dubbs, the only child of the wealthiest farmer in the neighborhood; young Harry Edmonds, just called to the bar, and for whom his friends already predicted a brilliant career; Edward Simpson, the junior partner of the principal mercantile firm in the place, were prominent among these. Each wooed in his peculiar way. Dubbs had enjoyed no advantages of education beyond what the village grammar-school afforded; but then he was an accomplished graduate in all rural sports. No young man in the country had as good a horse, or rode him as well; he had the best pointers, and was the best shot to be found in 20 miles round, and was in all such accomplishments perfect. To him Letty was under obligations for finishing completely one part of her education; for he broke a favorite colt for her especial use, and under his skillful tuition she became a fearless and accomplished horse-woman. Edmonds quoted Byron and Moore to her constantly, when he had better have been employed over Coke and Starkie; and spoiled as much paper in perpetrating bad verses to her, as would have sufficed for his pleas and declarations during a year’s practice; and Simpson never returned from “the city,” whither he went to make the purchases of goods for his firm, without a selection of the choicest articles for Letty’s especial use, accompanied with directions as to the latest style of making them up.