'LINA'S PURCHASE AND HUGH'S
There were piles of handsome dress goods upon the counter at Harney's that afternoon, and Harney was anxious to sell. It was not always that he favored a customer with his own personal services, and 'Lina felt proportionably flattered when he came forward and asked what he could show her. Of course, a dress for the party—he had sold at least a dozen that day, but fortunately he still had the most elegant pattern of all, and he knew it would exactly suit her complexion and style.
Deluded 'Lina! Richard Harney, the wealthy bachelor merchant, did not mean one word he said. He had tried to sell that dress a dozen times, and been as often refused, no one caring just then to pay fifty dollars for a dress which could only be worn on great occasions. But 'Lina was easily flattered, while the silk was beautiful. But ten dollars was all she had, and turning away from the tempting silk she answered faintly, that "it was superb, but she could not afford it, besides, she had not the money to-day."
"Not the slightest consequence," was Harney's quick rejoinder. "Not the slightest consequence. Your brother's credit is good—none better in the country, and I'm sure he'll be proud to see you in it. I should, were I your brother."
'Lina blushed, while the wish to possess the silk grew every moment stronger.
"If it were only fifty dollars, it would not seem so bad," she thought. Hugh could manage it some way, and Mr. Harney was so good natured; he could wait a year, she knew. But the making would cost ten dollars more, for that was the price Miss Allis charged, to say nothing of the trimmings. "No, I can't," she said, quite decidedly, at last, asking for the lace with which she at first intended renovating her old pink silk, "She must see Miss Allis first to know how much she wanted," and promising to return, she tripped over to Frankfort's fashionable dressmaker, whom she found surrounded with dresses for the party.
As some time would elapse ere Miss Allis could attend to her, she went back to Harney's just for one more look at the lovely fabric. It was, if possible, more beautiful than before, and Harney was more polite, while the result of the whole was that, when 'Lina at four o'clock that afternoon entered her carriage to go home, the despised pink silk, still unpaid on Haney's books, was thrown down anywhere, while in her hands she carefully held the bundle Harney brought himself, complimenting her upon the sensation she was sure to create, and inviting her to dance the first set with him. Then with a smiling bow he closed the door upon her, and returning to his books wrote down Hugh Worthington his debtor to fifty dollars more.
"That makes three hundred and fifty," he said to himself. "I know he can't raise that amount of ready money, and as he is too infernal proud to be sued, I'm sure of Rocket or Lulu, it matters but little which," and with a look upon his face which made it positively hideous, the scheming Harney closed his books, and sat down to calculate the best means of managing the rather unmanageable Hugh!
It was dark when 'Lina reached home, but the silk looked well by firelight, better even than in the light of day, and 'Lina would have been quite happy but for her mother's reproaches and an occasional twinge as she wondered what Hugh would say. He had not yet returned, and numerous were Mrs. Worthington's surmises as to what was keeping him so late. A glance backward for an hour or so will let us into the secret.
It was the day when a number of negroes were to be sold in the courthouse. There was no trouble in disposing of them all, save one, a white-haired old man, whom they called Uncle Sam.