"Yes; and I used to think that would be a match, but I've changed my mind. It's plain to be seen now that it's one of the younger sisters he's after."
"Mildred's young enough; doesn't look a day over twenty, though I suppose she's really twenty-three or four."
"About that, I suppose; but she could easily pass for eighteen. I wonder if she's made up her mind to be an old maid. If I can read the signs Wallace was deeply in love with her at one time; and it's said she's had other offers."
"I don't doubt it; she's too charming to have escaped that, if the young men have any taste. Yet she's not so handsome, after all, as Zillah. I wonder why she wouldn't have Wallace; he's fine-looking, and an excellent match every way."
"Perhaps she left her heart in the South. I've thought I could see a change in her ever since her visit there. Well, I don't believe her mother's in any hurry to have her marry and leave, for there never was a better daughter or sister. I've heard Mrs. Keith say more than once that she didn't know how she could ever do without Mildred."
"And she may well say so," joined in Mrs. Prior; "the other two are uncommon nice girls, but Mildred bears off the palm to my thinking. I hear folks wondering now and then how it is that Mr. Lord has lived single all these years. I don't profess to know anything for certain about it, but I've strong suspicions that he's tried for Mildred Keith and couldn't get her, and can't be content to take anybody else."
"She seems cut out for a minister's wife," remarked one of the others.
"Yes; she'd make a good one, I don't doubt," assented Mrs. Prior; "but I don't blame her for refusing him (if she has done it); it's a kind of a hard life, and he's too old for her and too absented-minded and odd."
The girls—Mildred and her mates—were talking over the arrangements for the approaching nuptials. The young men wanted a double wedding and the girls were not averse to the idea, but the parents of each wanted to see their own daughter married beneath their own roof.