His skillful experience had taught him to reserve the more costly and rarer articles until the excitement of competition had warmed the bidders up to the necessary pitch. Dawson and Maria were neither of them present; but the watchful eye of her legal brother-in-law saw to every thing. There was much competition to obtain many articles; by some, as mementoes of the pleasant hours passed within those walls; by others, as anxious to exhibit them in their pretending but less fashionable saloons as articles of decided taste and elegance, from their having once belonged to the fashionable leader, Mrs. Dawson. The sale was over--the sum total footed up--commissions and expenses deducted, and a very comfortable sum deposited in bank to the credit of Mr. Dawson. To this was to be added the amount derived from Maria’s jewels, which she actually succeeded in selling at about one half their original cost. This he wished her to keep as her own--but she refused; a common purse must be theirs--all, she said, but just a little, which she had, and which she intended to keep for “shoe and stocking” money, so she told him, adding playfully, “You must let me have one secret from you, dear; and so don’t ask me, I beseech you, where my shoe and stocking money comes from.” As she has no secrets with us, courteous reader, we may as well know. She rightly argued that satins, and brocades, and velvets, and such like, would be worse than useless to a farmer’s wife--and so she quietly disposed of them at a considerable sacrifice, but still for a very comfortable sum. She also argued that a suit of common fur would keep her quite as warm as her splendid set of marten, the envy of one half the town, and much more appropriate--and so the martens followed the brocades, and the velvets, and the jewels. From these resources she was enabled to realise enough to keep herself and her children not only in shoes and stockings, but also in all other clothing for a considerable time after the stock at present on hand was exhausted, without drawing on the resources of the farm.