"Ah! do not be angry with me that I cannot become for you that which you wish. I shall certainly not marry. I am too happy in my own home for that. Ah! this to be sure is egotistical, but I cannot do otherwise. Forgive me! I am so very much, so heartily attached to you; and I should never be happy again if you love not hitherto as formerly
"Your little
"Eva."
In the evening Eva received a beautiful and costly work-box, with the following lines:
"Yes, yes, I can very well believe that the rough rock would be appalling. You will not venture to lay your delicate white hand upon it, little Miss Eva; will not trouble yourself to breathe warmth upon my poor roses! Let them then remain in their grave!
"I shall now make a journey, nor see you again for a year and a day. But, good heavens! as you have given me a basket,[13] you shall receive in return a little box. I bought it for my—bride, Eva! Yet now, after all, Eva shall have it; shall keep it for my sake. She may return it when I cease to be
"Her true and devoted Friend."
"Do you think she is sorry for what she has done?" asked the Judge anxiously from his wife, as he saw Eva's hot tears falling on the work-box;—"but it cannot be helped. She marry! and that too with Munter! She is indeed nothing but a child! But that is just the way; when one has educated one's daughters, and taught them something of good manners, just when one has begun to have real pleasure in them, that one must lose them—must let them go to China if the lover chance to be a Chinese! It is intolerable! It is abominable! I would not wish my worst enemy the pain of having grown-up daughters. Is not Schwartz already beginning to draw a circle about Sara? Good gracious! if we should yet have the plague of another lover!"
FOOTNOTES:
[13] To say that "a gentleman has received a basket," is the same as saying he is a rejected lover.—M. H.