I love the deep snow and the trees bare as they are, and the square down the road a piece, and the post-office, and the trolley cars. Our [Pg 360] cars go fast, but not too fast,—just fast enough, and they have no dead man's curve. Folks in Oldburyport die a natural death. They are not killed by the cable or run over by bicycles, or, what is quite as bad, hurried and worried to death by the rush of life, as people are in New York. I declare I felt as if I had lived an age in the month I was there; but then, why shouldn't I, with so much happening and such exciting and distressing things too! It seems as if everything went crooked. Now, if my advice had been taken in the beginning—but nobody ever will take advice except in Oldburyport.
It makes me wrathy to think of Winifred Anstice marrying that Mr. Flint, who is so dangerously irreligious, and Philip Brady marrying Nora Costello, who is so injudiciously religious, and then poor Leonard Davitt throwing away his life for that pert, forward, foolish Tilly Marsden, who has gone back to her shop-counter, pleased, for all I know, with all the excitement she raised! If corporal punishment in early youth were strictly adhered to, there would be fewer Tilly Marsdens in the world. In Oldburyport, I am happy to say, we believe in corporal punishment.
Poor Leonard! I have not got over his death yet. It was all so sad and so unnecessary. [Pg 361] But I am not sure that he is not better off as he is than he would have been married to that girl. His mother took to her bed when she heard the news, and the doctor thinks she will not live long. So Tilly Marsden will have that death on her conscience, too, or would if she had a conscience to have it on.
There might very easily have been a third, for they said the first bullet which Leonard fired must have come within an inch of Jonathan Flint's head. I should have supposed such an escape must have softened even him. I thought it was a good time to impress the lesson, so I pointed to the bullet buried in the wall.
"Mr. Flint," said I, "can you look at that and not believe in Providence?"
Instead of being convinced, as I thought he would, he only pointed to Leonard's body lying under it and said nothing.
I hate these people who are given to expressive silences. It takes one at a disadvantage. Silence is the only argument to which there is no answer. At the time I could not think of anything to say to him, though, since I got home, I've thought of ever so many. It is easier to think, I find, in Oldburyport.
Except for the last terrible days I had a beautiful time in the city, and as I look over my diary I am quite overwhelmed to see how many things [Pg 362] Winifred did for me. She is a dear girl! I have promised to embroider all the table linen for her wedding outfit. I console myself by reflecting that Mr. Flint is a descendant of Jonathan Edwards, and if she wants me to like him, I suppose I must try, though I may confess right here to my diary that for years I have been wanting her to marry Philip Brady. She ought to have done it, but we are all fools where matrimony is concerned.
P. S. I have promised to marry Dr. Cricket.
THE END.