'And I am really engaged! I can hardly believe it. How often I have thought and wondered who my husband would be, or if I ever should marry. But I suppose all girls have the same thoughts; at all events my future is now settled. I wonder if Tom will always care as much for me as he does now?'
Mary Holt sat in the bright firelight, watching the flickering flames, and thinking of her new position.
She was very young and inexperienced, and Tom Cowell's declaration of love and somewhat masterful wooing had taken her by storm. She had hardly realized that he was dear to her beyond friendship, when he asked her to be his wife, and, in spite of the suddenness of her betrothal, if the bright, dimpling smile and sunny eyes might be taken as a sign, she was a very happy little woman indeed.
Tom had not been very long in Mapleton when he met and fell in love with Mary, who, for her part, much as she liked his great broad shoulders and honest, handsome face, was long before she could believe that she, who was said to be the prettiest and most admired girl in that part of Pennsylvania, could ever love such a very different man from the one she had pictured as her conquering hero.
Her ideal had been such a very superior creature—quite unlike good-natured, handsome, but, to Mary's eyes, who judged by the Mapleton standard, somewhat common-place Tom Cowell.
He had seemed to her, too, to have an unpleasantly good opinion of his own people and his home, which was Limeton—as every one knows, much behind Mapleton in culture and refinement, although it could boast of its greater wealth; but wealth in such a sooty atmosphere lost all attraction for Mary. Yet he quoted Limeton, and, what the Limetonians did, thought, and intended to do, and the effect of their intentions on the coming election for President, which was exasperating to Mary, who, like all loyal Mapletonians, was quite sure their own city was the brain of the State, even if Limeton did represent its wealth; so that what the former said and thought was of far more importance to the country, and she would smile at the purse-proud ignorance of Limeton.
Even when she saw Tom's honest admiration for herself, and found that she enjoyed his visits and attentions, she believed it was only the magnetism of his good humour, and breezy, healthy nature that pleased her; she was sure it was nothing more.
And yet the day came, as we see, when she had been brought to know that she loved him, and to look forward to being his wife as her greatest good. But then, in his growing affection for her, and his absorbing anxiety as to its being returned, he had left off quoting 'my mother' and Limeton quite so often; and Mary flattered herself it was because he was beginning to see the superiority of Mapleton, and thus tacitly acknowledged it.
A few days after her betrothal she received a letter from Mrs. Cowell, inviting her to go and stay with her for a few weeks, in order that they might become better acquainted.
The letter was kind and motherly, and Mary felt that it was so: but although there were no actual faults of spelling, it was evidently not the production of a cultured woman, and she thought with some dread of her future mother-in-law. It would all be very tolerable if Tom did not think so over much of his own kin, but he evidently looked on his women-folk as the most superior of their kind.