“That’s what she has—Sara,” said uncle Theodore, looking rather equivocally in her face, as if he were prepared to overturn whatever she might depose, “do you hold of that mind still?”
“Certainly, sir,” responded Sara, with some ill-concealed hesitation, and not a little confusion, “I am not wont to vacillate much in my opinions.”
“And you make a life-long bargain with me to retain your post as my house-keeper, in presence of cousin Maria as witness, do you?”
“Yes, sir, unless you release me some time, at your pleasure.”
“You are a noble girl, Sara, darling—I’ll buy you that Arabian to-morrow, and you shall have a groom on purpose to attend him;” and my uncle laid his hand tenderly on cousin Sara’s beautiful head, in token of his satisfaction.
By this time it was his stated hour for retiring—he took the “big ha’ Bible” from its place, reverently read a holy psalm, and then commending his household to the care of an Almighty Protector, in a low and fervent prayer, he bade us good night, and left the drawing room.
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CHAPTER II.
My uncle Waldron, or Judge Waldron, for he had been promoted to “the bench,” was a bachelor—a hopelessly confirmed bachelor. Not that he under-valued woman—no—he regarded her with the noblest, loftiest, and most rational admiration of any man I ever knew. But his notions were peculiar, and perhaps not a little fastidious in the matter of what a wife should be, so he never proposed himself as a husband to any lady of his widely extended and really valuable circle of acquaintances, to the infinite astonishment of some of them. In the course of long years he became thoroughly tired of being a boarder—of never realizing any of the quiet pleasures and sympathies that cluster round the hearth and the heart of home. So he erected a beautiful villa, just a delightful drive from the city, adorned it within and without with all the decorations and elegancies which could be suggested by the highest refinement of taste, and a liberal expenditure of the amplest means, and then we surely thought, as who would not, that having built his nest, my uncle was about to choose his mate, and pass the winter of his life in the calm sunshine of domestic bliss. But we “reckoned without our host,” in that calculation. Uncle Waldron had other intentions.
Now cousin Sara was the eldest niece in the family circle, and from her very birth she had been uncle Theodore’s acknowledged favorite—even in her extreme babyhood he had condescended to take her in his arms, and rock her for half-an-hour—an instance of partiality, by which none of us could boast of being distinguished. We all wished that we could have been the eldest niece, so we could have been the favorite—how much more we wished we could be just like cousin Sara.