Now there were two tolerably rich girls in our parts: Miss Magdalen Crutty, with twelve thousand pounds (and, to do her justice, as plain a girl as ever I saw), and Miss Mary Waters, a fine, tall, plump, smiling, peach-cheeked, golden-haired, white-skinned lass, with only ten. Mary Waters lived with her uncle, the Doctor, who had helped me into the world, and who was trusted with this little orphan charge very soon after. My mother, as you have heard, was so fond of Bates, and Bates so fond of little Mary, that both, at first, were almost always in our house: and I used to call her my little wife, as soon as I could speak, and before she could walk, almost. It was beautiful to see us, the neighbours said. Well, when her brother, the lieutenant of an India ship, came to be captain, and actually gave Mary five thousand pounds, when she was about ten years old, and promised her five thousand more, there was a great talking, and bobbing, and smiling, between the Doctor and my parents, and Mary and I were left together more than ever, and she was told to call me her little husband: and she did, and it was considered a settled thing from that day. She was really amazingly fond of me. Can any one call me mercenary after that? Though Miss Crutty had twelve thousand, and Mary only ten (five in hand, and five in the bush), I stuck faithfully to Mary. As a matter of course, Miss Crutty hated Miss Waters. The fact was, Mary had all the country dangling after her, and not a soul would come to Magdalen, for all her £12,000. I used to be attentive to her, though (as it's always useful to be); and Mary would sometimes laugh and sometimes cry at my flirting with Magdalen. This I thought proper very quickly to check. "Mary," said I, "you know that my love for you is disinterested,—for I am faithful to you, though Miss Crutty is richer than you. Don't fly into a rage, then, because I pay her attentions, when you know that my heart and my promise are engaged to you." The fact is, to tell a little bit of a secret, there is nothing like the having two strings to your bow. "Who knows?" thought I, "Mary may die; and then where are my £10,000?" So I used to be very kind indeed to Miss Crutty; and well it was that I was so: for when I was twenty, and Mary eighteen, I'm blest if news did not arrive that Captain Waters, who was coming home to England with all his money in rupees, had been taken— ship, rupees, self and all—by a French privateer; and Mary, instead of £10,000, had only £5000, making a difference of no less than £350 per annum betwixt her and Miss Crutty.