Sadie, adjusting her spectacles and turning on the electric table lamp at her elbow, read the glaring article which had that evening appeared on the first page of their daily paper and which every household in New Munich was, they knew, now reading with feelings of astonishment, curiosity, disappointment or chagrin, as the case might be, for the sisters were sure that many heartaches among the marriageable maidens of the town would be caused by the news that Danny was no longer within their possible reach. These twenty-five years past he and his gold had been dangling before them—and now to have him appropriated, without warning, by a non-resident!
The article was headed in large type:
"ONE MORE VICTIM OF CUPID'S DARTS—
DANIEL LEITZEL LED LIKE A LAMB
TO HYMEN'S ALTAR."
Sadie breathed heavily as she read:
In a communication received at this office to-day from our esteemed fellow-citizen, Daniel Leitzel, Esquire, sojourning for the past four weeks in the balmy South, we are informed of his engagement and impending marriage to "a young lady of distinguished Southern lineage," one who, we may feel sure, will grace very acceptably the social circle here of which Mr. Leitzel is such a prominent, prosperous, and pleasant member. The news comes to our town as a great surprise, for we had almost begun to give Danny up as a hopeless bach. He will, however, lead his bride to Hymen's altar early next month and bring her straightway to his palatial residence on Main Street, presided over by his estimable sisters, Miss Jennie and Miss Sadie. New Munich offers its congratulations to her esteemed fellow-citizen, though some of us wonder why he found it necessary to go so far away to find a wife, with so many lovely ladies here in his native town to choose from. Love, however, we all know, is a capricious mistress and none may guess whither she may lead.
The happy and fortunate lady, Miss Margaret Berkeley of Berkeley Hill, a distinguished and picturesque old colonial homestead two miles out of Charleston, S.C., is, we are informed, a lineal descendant on her mother's side of two governors of her native state and the niece of the learned scholar and eminent psychologist, the late Dr. Osmond Berkeley, with whom Miss Margaret made her home at Berkeley Hill until his decease a year ago, since which sad event she has continued to reside at this same homestead, her married sister and family living with her, this sister being the wife of a Charleston attorney with whom Daniel Leitzel, Esquire, has been conducting some legal railroad business in Charleston and through whom our esteemed fellow-citizen, it seems, met his happy doom.
New Munich's most aristocratic society will anticipate with pleasurable interest the arrival of the happy bride and groom, Mrs. and Mr. Daniel Leitzel. No doubt many very elegant society events will take place this winter in honour of the newcomer among us; for New Munich is noted for its hospitality.
"It don't say," Jennie sharply remarked, "whether she's well-fixed—though to be sure if she comes from such high people they'd have to be rich."
"But her grand relations are all deceased, the paper says," returned Sadie despondently. "You may better believe, Jennie, if she had money, Danny would have told the noospapers."
"It says in the paper she's living with her married sister, and it looks to me," Jennie shrewdly surmised, "as if her brother-in-law (that lawyer Danny had dealings with) wanted to get rid of her and worked her off on our Danny. Or else that she took up with Danny to get a home of her own."