THE FUTURE MRS. THORNTON
By Sarah Guernsey Bradley
From a worldly point of view there could be no question as to the wisdom and desirability of the match, and Miss Warren’s family was worldly to the core.
It had been a crushing blow to Mrs. Warren’s pride, and, incidentally, a blow in a vastly more material direction, that her two older daughters had made something of a mess of matrimony, pecuniarily speaking.
She was confessedly ambitious for Nancy—Nancy, the youngest, the cleverest, the fairest of the three. Position she always would have, being a Warren, but she wanted the girl to have all the other good things of this life, that for so many years had been unsatisfied desires. Not, of course, that she would want Nancy to marry for money, she assured herself virtuously; that, in addition to being an indirect violation of an article of the Decalogue, was so distinctly plebeian. But it would be so comfortable if Nancy’s affections could only be engaged in a direction where the coffers were not exactly empty. In other words, money would be no obstacle to perfect connubial bliss.
And think of the future which awaited Nancy if she would but say the word! Even the fondly cherished memory of the Warrens’ past glory dwindled into nothingness in comparison.
To be sure, Mr. James Thornton was not so young as he had been ten years ago—“What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all,” Mrs. Warren was fond of quoting—nor, in point of girth, did he assume less aldermanic proportions as time rolled on, but there was such a golden lining to these small clouds of affliction, that he was very generally looked upon as an altogether desirable parti.
It must be admitted that, among other minor idiosyncrasies, Mr. James Thornton would now and then slip into the vernacular. Under great stress of feeling, in the heat of argument and the like, he had been known to break the Sixth Commandment in so far as the English of the king was concerned.