Amy continued silent; and Aunt Adeline renewed her interrogation with more severity. A little indignation began now to mingle with Amy’s grief, and she was on the point of astonishing her aunt with a spirited reply, when the latter exclaimed:
“You needn’t tell me where you got them, Miss. I know all about it. They were given to you by that plebeian clodhopper, Tom Greenleaf, the milk-man’s son. Yes, you mean-spirited thing, you. The milk-man’s son!”
It was even so. Mortifying to my feelings as it is to make any such admission in regard to a heroine of mine, I must confess that Aunt Adeline was right, and that the flowers were the gift (pah!) of an individual of thoroughly rustic extraction. Some twenty years since, old Greenleaf was the owner of a snug farm on the island of Manhattan; where he obtained a frugal subsistence by selling milk to the denizens of the city. It was even true, that occasionally, when the old man was confined at home by the rheumatism, Tom, who was then a mere lad, would mount the cart and go the rounds in his father’s stead. While engaged in this employment, it was his lot to meet Amy Ammidon, whose family he supplied with the snowy beverage enclosed in his large tin tubs. Amy was then as rosy-cheeked, black-eyed a little maiden as ever perpetrated unconscious damage in the hearts of venturous youths. Tom instinctively discovered her fondness for flowers, and the nosegays he used to bring her in consequence surpassed all computation. Years rolled on; and one fine summer day the old milk-man was overwhelmed with astonishment at discovering that his little thirty-acre farm was worth a hundred thousand dollars. He sold out, purchased a beautiful estate in Westchester, removed to it, and just as he was beginning to feel the ennui of inert prosperity, he died, leaving Tom the sole heir of his safely invested property.
Tom showed himself a man, every inch of him, in the course he pursued. He had always had a taste for reading, and he now devoted himself with assiduity to the attainment of a fitting education. At the age of twenty-one he graduated at a respectable college, and then wisely chose the profession of a farmer. He had not been home many days, when in one of his walks he encountered his old friend Amy. Both were equally delighted at renewing the acquaintance; and one step led to another, until Tom had the audacity to send her the nosegay which had called down Aunt Adeline’s appropriate indignation.
“Hear me, Amy Ammidon,” continued she; “if you dare to disgrace your family by receiving the addresses of that son of a cauliflower—that low-born, low-bred cultivator of turnip-tops and radishes—that superintendent of hay-mows and pig-pens—that vulgar cow-boy—if you dare to sully the blood of an Ammidon by such a union, I will utterly disown you, and you shall never have the advantage of my society again.”
Strange to say, Amy’s eyes brightened at this menace, and I am afraid she was just on the point of exclaiming, “O, then, I will marry him, by all means;” but she checked herself, and said: “Can’t one receive a few flowers from a gentleman without risking the imputation of being engaged to him?”
“Gentleman, indeed! Tom Greenleaf a gentleman!”
“Yes, Miss Adeline Ammidon,” exclaimed Amy in a tone which transfixed her aunt with amazement, “as true a gentleman as any ancestor of yours or mine ever was! A gentleman not only in mind and manners, but what is better far, in heart—and therefore a perfect gentleman!”
“Oh dear! What a deal of spirit Miss Innocence can show when a word is said against the clodhopper! Why doesn’t she show as much indignation when Frank Phaeton and Harry Hawker, from both of whom she has had offers, are abused?”
“I shall be eighteen next January—heigho!”