"Couldn't you be satisfied with the nat'ral color of your hair? To my mind black's handsomer than brown."
"You're right, aunt. I wouldn't have done it if it hadn't been for
Miss Percival."
"Are you engaged to her?"
"No, Aunt Deborah. The fact was, I found she wasn't domestic, and didn't know anything about keeping house, but only cared for dress, so I drew off, and she's married to somebody else now."
"I'm glad to hear it," said Deborah, emphatically. "The jade! She wouldn't have been a proper wife for you. You want some good girl that's willin' to go into the kitchen, and look after things, and not carry all she's worth on her back."
"I agree with you, aunt," said Ferdinand, who thought it politic, in view of the request he meant to make by and by, to agree with hie aunt in her views of what a wife should be.
Aunt Deborah began to regard her nephew as quite a sensible young man, and to look upon him with complacency.
"I wish, Ferdinand," she said, "you liked farmin'."
"Why, aunt?"
"You could stay here, and manage my farm for me."