If Dudley Venner did not know just what he wanted at this period of
his life, there were a great many people in the town of Rockland who
thought they did know. He had been a widower long enough,--nigh twenty
year, wa'n't it? He'd been aout to Spraowles's party,--there wa'n't
anything to hender him why he shouldn't stir raound l'k other folks.
What was the reason he didn't go abaout to taown-meetin's, 'n'
Sahbath-meetin's, 'n' lyceums, 'n' school-'xaminations, 'n'
s'prise-parties, 'n' funerals,--and other entertainments where the
still-faced two-story folks were in the habit of looking round to see
if any of the mansion-house gentry were present?--Fac' was, he was
livin' too lonesome daown there at the mansion-haouse. Why shouldn't
he make up to the Jedge's daughter? She was genteel enough for him
and--let's see, haow old was she? Seven-'n'-twenty,--no,
six-'n'-twenty,--Born the same year we buried aour little Anny Mari.
There was no possible objection to this arrangement, if the parties
interested had seen fit to make it or even to think of it. But
"Portia," as some of the mansion-house people called her, did not
happen to awaken the elective affinities of the lonely widower. He met
her once in a while, and said to himself that she was a good specimen
of the grand style of woman; and then the image came back to him of a
woman not quite so large, not quite so imperial in her port, not quite
so incisive in her speech, not quite so judicial in her opinions, but
with two or three more joints in her frame and two or three soft
inflections in her voice which for some absurd reason or other drew
him to her side and so bewitched him that he told her half his secrets
and looked into her eyes all that, he could not tell, in less time
than it would have taken him to discuss the champion paper of the last
Quarterly with the admirable "Portia.
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