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"Well, immediately below the Saint hangs a small painting of Uncle Joshua, in white stockings, cocked hat, and coat of maroon velvet, the poor gentleman's favorite dress. "'Ah! said Mrs. Hunesley, with her eyes fixed upon the Saint, 'quite a fine portrait!
Behind him, however, he had left the proprietress of the trunk, a lady of about five-and-twenty, in whose countenance I detected that strange sort of familiarity that entire strangers sometimes carry about them. "This is Doctor Dastick's, is it not? Do you know whether Mrs. Hunesley expected me?" she asked, with a grace of manner that was quite irresistible.
'I can remember him walking up the broad-aisle at church, dressed just as you see him there. "'I should not have thought it would have been allowed! Did not the deacons turn him out? exclaimed Mrs. Hunesley, in great astonishment. "'Turn him out! Why, Madam, he was a deacon himself, and the most popular man in the parish.
"Not unless you substitute Saint Josselyn for an ancestor, as Mrs. Hunesley did the other day," said Miss Prowley. "Ha, ha! it might not be a bad plan to follow out the lady's suggestion: but do tell the story of her strange mistake." "Why, you must know that the other day old Doctor Dastick brought his New-York niece to call upon us.
I informed her that I was a stranger in the place, and was only at the Doctor's for a single evening; but that I could not think that Mrs. Hunesley expected anybody, as I had just seen that lady firmly fixed in the front row of chairs before the Doctor's table, whence, owing to the crowd of sitters behind, she would have some difficulty in extricating herself.
Yet, when my friend copied for me some extracts from the lady's letters that were sensible and feminine, I thought how odd it would be, if something should come of it, after all. I often found myself skipping Colonel Prowley's accounts of old Doctor Dastick, Mrs. Hunesley, and other great people of his town, and pondering upon the notices of his Western correspondent.
Hunesley, Doctor Dastick's favorite niece, was the schoolmate of Miss Kate Hurribattle, and what more likely than that she should invite her friend to pass a few weeks with her at her summer-home in the country? And could there be a greater necessity than that, meeting daily as we did through those lovely August weeks, she should become in short, that I should marry Miss Hurribattle?
Hunesley from New York, two or three distinguished visitors from the hotel, and the elders of Foxden, looking wistfully at the bones, as if in envy of their fleshless condition that sultry August evening. It was with real satisfaction that I perceived I was considered worthy of no more worshipful company than that of the standing stragglers at the dark end of the parlor.
Hunesley managed to get out among the first, and was heartily glad to see my newly acquired friend, calling her, "My dear Kate," which I thought was a very pretty name, and saying that she had not expected her quite so soon. I looked into the parlor and saw the Prowley party tumbling over chairs, and scaling settees, in their haste to meet the cooling breezes of the piazza.
"How under the sun did you get to Foxden?" "Why I am here naturally enough as the guest of my friend Colonel Prowley." "And I am here naturally enough as the guest of my friend Mrs. Hunesley."
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