mother. The best tribute to what she had accomplished in this direction
was in the fact, that you always heard the young people mention Squire
Gunn and his wife as "Hetty Gunn's father" or "Hetty Gunn's mother;" and
the two old people were seen at many a gathering where there was not a
single old face but theirs.

"Hetty won't go without her father and mother," or "Hetty'll be so
pleased if we ask her father and mother," was frequently heard. From
this free and unembarrassed association of the old and the young, grew
many excellent things. In this wholesome atmosphere honesty and good
behavior thrived; but there was little chance for the development of
those secret sentimental preferences and susceptibilities out of which
spring love-making and thoughts of marriage.

There probably was not a marriageable young man in Welbury who had not
at one time or another thought to himself, what a good thing it would be
to marry Hetty Gunn. Hetty was pretty, sensible, affectionate, and rich.
Such girls as that were not to be found every day. A man might look
far and long before he could find such a wife as Hetty would make. But
nothing seemed to be farther from Hetty's thoughts than making a wife
of herself for anybody. And the world may say what it pleases about its
being the exclusive province of men to woo: very few men do woo a woman
who does not show herself ready to be wooed. It is a rare beauty or
a rare spell of some sort which can draw a man past the barrier of
a woman's honest, unaffected, and persistent unconsciousness of any
thoughts of love or matrimony. So between Hetty's unconsciousness and
her perpetual comradeship with her father and mother, the years went on,
and on, and no man asked Hetty to marry him. The odd thing about it was
that every man felt sure that he was the only man who had not asked her;
and a general impression had grown up in the town that Hetty Gunn had
refused nearly everybody. She was so evidently a favorite; "Gunn's" was
so much the headquarters for all the young people; it was so open to
everybody's observation how much all men admired and liked Hetty,--she
was never seen anywhere without one or two or three at her service: it
was the most natural thing in the world for people to think as they did.
Yet not a human being ever accused Hetty of flirting; her manner was
always as open, friendly, and cordial as an honest boy's, and with no
more trace of self-seeking or self-consciousness about it