"You are very welcome, Mr. Dodge," the mistress of the house commenced; "I hear you passed the day, yesterday, up at the Effinghamses."
"Why, yes, Mrs. Abbott, the Effinghams insisted on it, and I could not well get over the sacrifice, after having been their shipmate so long. Besides it is a little relief to talk French, when one has been so long in the daily practice of it."
"I hear there is company at the house?"
"Two of our fellow-travellers, merely. An English baronet, and a young man of whom less is known than one could wish. He is a mysterious person, and I hate mystery, Mrs. Abbott."
"In that, then, Mr. Dodge, you and I are alike. I think every thing should be known. Indeed, that is not a free country in which there are any secrets. I keep nothing from my neighbours, and, to own the truth, I do not like my neighbours to keep any thing from me."
"Then you'll hardly like the Effinghams, for I never yet met with a more close-mouthed family. Although I was so long in the ship with Miss Eve, I never heard her once speak of her want of appetite; of sea-sickness, or of any thing relating to her ailings even: no? can you imagine how close she is on the subject of the beaux; I do not think I ever heard her use the word, or so much as allude to any walk or ride she ever took with a single man. I set her down, Mrs. Abbott, as unqualifiedly artful!"
"That you may with certainty, sir, for there is no more sure sign that a young woman is all the while thinking of the beaux, than her never mentioning them."
"That I believe to be human nature; no ingenuous person ever thinks much of the particular subject of conversation. What is your opinion, Mrs. Abbott, of the contemplated match at the Wigwam?"
"Match!" exclaimed Mrs. Abbott.--"What, already! It is the most indecent thing I ever heard of! Why, Mr. Dodge, the family has not been home a fortnight, and to think so soon of getting married! It is quite as bad as a widower's marrying within the month."
Mrs. Abbott made a distinction, habitually, between the cases of widowers and widows, as the first, she maintained, might get married whenever they pleased, and the latter only when they got offers; and she felt just that sort of horror of a man's thinking of marrying too soon after the death of his wife, as might be expected in one who actually thought of a second husband before the first was dead.