Here I interrupted him with:—
"Hold on, my friend, hold on! I really can't stand this any longer. You greatly underrate fashionable ladies. They seem to you silly, false and unworthy; but many of them are not a hundredth part as false and silly as their dress and conversation. Many of these ladies who now seem so preposterous and absurd, will, when married, and fairly settled down, cast off this burlesque, and become sober, solid women."
"But, as they all dress and talk exactly alike, how am I to tell which is which and who is who?"
"Well, well, I must leave you; I have an engagement."
On my rounds I kept thinking what a perfect couple Miss Dinsmore and Mr. Finlay would make! I determined, without saying a word to either, to give them an opportunity to see each other. Fortunately for my plan, Miss Dinsmore had just begun to make her rounds early in the morning, and on foot. I advised Mr. Finlay to take an early ride, and that he might have company, I invited him to go with me in my early morning round. I took him through Miss Dinsmore's parish, and, as I had calculated, we met her with a basket on her arm. I drew up to make some inquiries about several poor and sick ones, for whom we were both interested. Just before we started on, I said, "Mr. Finlay, this is my friend, Miss Dinsmore." Five mornings in succession we rode in the same direction, and every morning but one we met Miss Dinsmore. I was pleased to notice that, as we approached one particular neighborhood, my friend became a little wandering in his conversation, and used his eyes with a marked earnestness.
It struck me as very curious that, although Finlay protracted the conversation more and more each morning on meeting Miss Dinsmore, making many inquiries about her proteges, and showing a singular interest in her work, he did not allude to her during the subsequent part of the ride, nor at any other time.
After a week or so, he said, when I called for him, that he was getting so well, he thought it his duty to attend to business. The very next day, when calling upon the poor widow, to whom I had first sent Miss Dinsmore, she asked, as I was about to leave,—
"Doctor, who was that gentleman that came here with Miss Swan yesterday? He seemed a very nice man." (I will here state that, to save the feelings of her fashionable friends, Miss Dinsmore introduced herself as Miss Swan to all her beneficiaries.)
"What kind of a looking man was he?" I asked.
"A large, tall man, with a black beard, and he carried his right hand in a sling. He carried Miss Swan's basket in his other hand."