Dennie has no new house and no old motto. I cannot suppose that he is altogether a contented man; but I believe he is happy in having taken the right course.
"My old heart do ache for ye, Dennie," said Aunty Losh to him, about the time of the wedding. "There ain't much on't left at my time o' life; but what there be of heart in me do ache, for sure. But ye done right, boy. 'Tain't no use tryin' to drive a woman. It's mighty like when ye tryin' to make a passel o' hens come into the house; and ye chase 'em up and say, 'Shoo!' and gits 'em a'most to the do'; and then they jist run straight past it. No; ye can't drive a woman, Dennie, if she's sot her mind ag'in it. That's what."
Dennie looked up from the tackle he was mending, and smiled. "Wal, aunty," he said, "you and me make out to git along pretty squar' together, don't we? I don't want for to drive ye, and ye can't look to drive me, neither. I don't complain."
The last three words will do for his motto; and they make a sufficiently honorable one.
MAJOR BARRINGTON'S MARRIAGE.
I.
Major Barrington before the acquisition of his military title was a rather shapely gentleman, with a fine, carrot-tinted complexion and strong, reddish whiskers, corresponding well with it, and branching out on either side of his chin with a valiant air.
Nor did his appearance greatly alter, immediately after passing from the condition of plain citizen to that of a defender of his country. His chin (which was shaven, and had a pretty little dent in the bottom of it) came for a time more prominently before the public, being carried somewhat higher in the air; but otherwise you would hardly have known what a great man he was.
It happened thus: The War of the Rebellion had been going on for about a year, and Mr. Zadoc S. Barrington was a boarder in the respectable but shabby mansion of one Mrs. Douce, in East Thirtieth Street, New York—a short, pale, dusty-looking woman, who had under her threadbare wing a maiden relative, Natalia by name. Natalia was alternately visitor and boarder, according as her slender income gave out or held out, and the consequence of this variable status was an equally variable disposition on the part of the aunt toward the niece. Mrs. Douce had naturally a dry heat of temper, which was possibly the source of that pulverous look about the face already noticed; and it was only by turning on periodical smiles, like the spray from a watering-cart, that she was able to allay the gritty particles of her irritability in the presence of paying boarders. It was to be expected, therefore, that during Natalia's impecunious seasons her aunt should relapse into unmitigated dustiness, and puff her discontent, so to speak, in dreary little gusts at the forlorn maiden.