Emma is an only child!
Oh, Hiram, how dare you utter those vows of love and constancy and everlasting regard and affection, coming, as you do, with your fingers fresh from turning the leaves at the register's office, where, forgetting your dinner, you have spent the entire afternoon in satisfying yourself about the real estate held by 'Amos Tenant?' Had the record under your precious investigation not been satisfactory, you would not have spent five minutes thereafter in the society of Emma Tenant.
Yet your conscience does not reproach you. No, not one bit. Positively you are not aware of anything reprehensible or even indelicate in what you are about. Thinking of the matter, as you carefully scan the books of record, you regard it precisely as you would any other investigation. To you it is essential that the girl you are to marry should have money. If she has, you will love her (for it is your duty to love your wife); if she has not, you cannot love her, and of course (duty again) you cannot wed her.
Poor Emma Tenant! No protecting instinct warns you against the young man who is now making such fervid protestations. You receive all he says as holy truth, sincere, earnest avowal, out of his heart into yours, for time and for eternity!
You, Emma Tenant, are a good girl, innocent and good: why, oh, why does not your nature shrink by this contact?
We forbear to paint the love scene in which Hiram figures. Enough to say that Emma could not and did not disguise the state of her affections. Yes, she confessed it, confessed she had been attracted by Hiram (poor thing) from the day she first saw him enter the Sunday school to take his place as one of its teachers.
How happy she was as she sat trembling with emotion, her hand in Hiram's calculating grasp, while she blushingly made her simple confession.
'But your father,' interposed Hiram, anxiously—'he will never give his consent.'
'And why will he not?' replied Emma. 'I am sure he likes you already, and when he knows'—