“After his good wife’s death this popularity began to extend itself in a remarkable manner amongst the females of the neighbourhood. [His] Betsy and Letty were good little girls, quick, civil and active, yet, poor things, what could such young girls know of a house like the ‘Rose’? All would go to rack and ruin without the eye of a mistress! Master Sims must look out for a wife. So thought the whole female world, and apparently Master Sims began to think so himself. [Illustration: OLD SHOEING FORGE] “The first fair one to whom his attention was directed was a rosy, pretty widow, a pastry-cook of the next town who arrived in our village on a visit to her cousin the baker for the purpose of giving confectionery lessons to his wife. Nothing was ever so hot as that courtship. During the week that the lady of pie-crust stayed, her lover almost lived in the oven.... It would be a most suitable match, as all the parish agreed.... And when our landlord carried her back to B—— in his new-painted green cart all the village agreed that they were gone to be married, and the ringers were just setting up a peal when Master Sims returned alone, single, crestfallen, dejected; the bells stopped of themselves, and we heard no more of the pretty pastry-cook. For three months after that rebuff mine host, albeit not addicted to assertions, testified an equal dislike to women and tartlets, widows and plum-cake.... “The fit, however, wore off in time, and he began again to follow the advice of his neighbours and to look out for a wife, up street and down street.... The down-street lady was a widow also, the portly, comely relict of our drunken village blacksmith, who began to find her shop, her journeymen and her eight children ... rather more than a lone woman could manage, and to sigh for a helpmate to ease her of her cares.... Master Sims was the coadjutor on whom she had inwardly pitched, and accordingly she threw out broad hints to that effect every time she encountered him ... and Mr. Sims was far too gallant and too much in the habit of assenting to listen unmoved ... and the whispers and smiles and hand-pressings were becoming very tender.... This was his down-street flame.