“My dear,” (and when Mrs. Hazleton said “my dear,” it was no idle word,) “I think you misjudge my motives entirely for what I have said. It is only for the good of your dear niece, for of course she must be very dear to you, and no doubt she is a very sweet girl, that I have raised any objections to her becoming a member of our happy family—no doubt, my love, she would prove a great acquisition—but—_hem_—but I think I have heard you say your sister, our sister Churchill, was in rather limited circumstances, and has been obliged to use great economy in bringing up her family. Now I ask you, my dear, if—if—we should not be doing wrong, very wrong, to vitiate the simple, happy tastes of Alice, and render dull and uncongenial the home of contentment in which she has ever so peacefully dwelt? This surely would be the case were we to introduce her into the gay world. So perfectly unsophisticated as she is, she would the more easily be led astray by the frivolities of fashionable life. Would it not be better for her, then, better for her dear mother, that this visit should not take place?” “No, I tell you no!—she shall come, she shall go everywhere, she shall see every thing the city has to boast.” “That can easily be done, love, in a few days,” replied the plausible lady. “Some pleasant morning you can go with her to the Museum, and Girard College, and the Water-Works. When I spoke of her going out, I meant to parties—” “And I mean to parties, and to theatres, and concerts, and—” “You are absurd, Mr. Hazleton!” “Go on!” “You have no regard for my feelings!” “Go on.” “You would willingly mortify me, and embarrass my sweet Julia, by linking her in companionship with this uncultivated hoyden!” “Go on.” “And also ruin the girl!” “What next?” “No, let me tell you, Mr. Hazleton, it must not, shall not be. Julia shall not be put to the blush continually for the solecisms this niece of yours will commit upon the rules of etiquette!” “Little dear!” “And, and—and, Mr. Hazleton—Lord, I wish I had never married!” and Mrs. Hazleton burst into tears. Mr. Hazleton walked out. CHAPTER II. A BACHELOR IN CUPID’S NET. In blessed bachelorhood had passed sixty years of Mr. Hazleton’s life. With no one’s whims but his own to nurse—no one to scold but his tailor and washerwoman, their flight had left little trace save in the silver threads with which Time weaves experience—linking the what has been to the what is and what will be. It is true, in early life he had wooed but not won, and it might be from disgust at the willful blindness of the lady of his love, he from that moment looked coldly upon the whole sex—blind to their beauty—deaf to their voices, and invulnerable to all their witchery, “charmed they never so wisely.”