“How romantic this is!”
“Very,” answered Mabel. “But pray, sir, why didn’t you bring Miss Gibbon? Or perhaps you are married, and I should say Mrs. Fletcher?”
“I’ll tell all about it by and by,” said Harry in a low tone. “It is an exceedingly painful subject. I am trying to forget it.”
Then, after a pause, and drawing the girl aside, he added:
“I may as well tell you now: our engagement is at an end—Miss Gibbon is in Europe.”
When Mabel heard this her kind heart was deeply moved for Harry as well as for Kitty. Mabel had no lover, but she had often thought that if she had one how dearly she would love him. “And if our engagement were to be broken off, I hardly think I should ever smile again.”
“Well, Harry,” continued Mr. Willey, addressing his old friend, and at the same time sweeping his hand over the landscape, “is not this a charming country? Look, yonder is the prairie; and there is Rock River—isn’t it a fine stream? And there you see my timber—I have fifty acres of it; and that is my corn-field—a good fifty acres of corn; and there are my cattle; and I have no end of chickens and turkeys; and I have a good orchard. In fact, I want for nothing, absolutely nothing.”
“Well, you ought to be happy,” answered Mr. Fletcher.
“Happy isn’t the word,” put in Mrs. Willey.
“Right, wife,” said the farmer. “I’d not change places with the richest man in New York. People talk about the panic. Why, it hasn’t harmed me a bit. My corn is ripening just as well now as before the crash; my land is all paid for; I owe not a dollar to anybody; and I really don’t know what worry means.”