BY F. E. F.
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CHAPTER I.
Use every man after his desert, and who shall escape whipping. Hamlet.
“Did you ever hear a man talk so like a fool as Mr. Barton did yesterday, Sarah?” said Mary Minturn to Miss Gorham. “I declare, I pitied his wife—did not you?”
“No, certainly not,” replied her friend. “Why should I? Mr. Barton does not talk more like a fool now than he did before his marriage. Fanny chose him with her eyes or rather ears open, and if she could put up with his folly then, she may now.”
“True enough,” answered Mary. “And how she came to fall in love with him passes my comprehension. I would not have believed it had it not actually happened.”
“Really, Mary,” said Sarah laughing, “your sympathies and compassions often pass my comprehension. Here you are pitying Fanny for having married a man, who, by your own account, she is in love with.”
“No, Sarah,” replied Mary, “I am not pitying her for marrying the man she is in love with, but for being ashamed of the man she loves.”
“Ashamed of the man she loves!” repeated Miss Gorham with infinite contempt. “Now, really, Mary, you had better reserve your compassion for a more deserving object. If Fanny has married a man she is ashamed of, she should be ashamed of herself.”