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And when this foolish little romance, which had taken nebulous outline in the fancy of Colonel Prowley, suddenly fell at his feet a serious indubitability, the dear, delighted old gentleman was the first to declare, that, as our engagement had existed for the last seventy years, it certainly did not seem worth while to wait much longer.
"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.
"And which of our guests is to be represented by the oak?" asked Miss Prowley, in a tone which betrayed a woman's perception of matrimonial incongruities. "Nay, sister, our young friend has a steadiness of character which would be ill-mated with some giddy girl from the nursery. So make your vine a little woody, and the union will be all the firmer."
The conversation which I had the honor of renewing with the lady, though it did not at all advance the whimsical project of Colonel Prowley, increased my respect for the high instincts of Nature which prompted her concern in the elevation of woman.
If I were obliged to designate in one word the profession and calling of Colonel Prowley of Foxden, I should say he was a Correspondent. Of course I do not mean a regular newspaper-correspondent, paid to concoct letters from Paris in the office of the "Foxden Regulator"; nor yet the amateur ditto, who is never tired of making family-tours to the White Mountains.
"Why, yes," said Colonel Prowley; "but when we see how slight an accident resolved the mystery, we should receive with doubt much of the personal scandal which is tossing about the world."
We were taken to the parlor, stiffly neat in all its appurtenances, introduced to Miss Prowley, and soon after summoned to dinner.
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.
What would it matter to him that I had prepared a circumstantial account of how all petty objections were got over, or that I had elaborated a peculiarly felicitous tag which Colonel Prowley would speak at a few backs as they disappeared into the lobby? The auditor referred to has got an inkling of how things are to end, and can guess out the particulars as he hurries off to his business.
He, it would appear, thought that some account of my acquisition might supply the matter for his diurnal paragraph. At all events, I received, some days after, a letter dated from Foxden, and bearing the signature of Elijah Prowley.
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