will be entirely unfitted for her
state of life, and for the people she must live with."

Her words had hardly time to chill my heart when it bounded again, as I
turned hurriedly away and passed under the window on my way out, at
hearing her brother's answer:--

"There is too much in her to be spoiled. I like her. She has talent and
character, and I cannot understand, Esther, why you are so prejudiced
against her."

There were others besides Mr. Hammond who thought me improved and who
liked me. Tom Salyers never let an evening pass without dropping into
our house on his way home from the store, where he was a sort of
overseer or salesman,--never failed to bring in its season the earliest
wild-flower or the freshest fruit,--had thoroughly searched Catlettsburg
for books to please me,--nay, had once sent an indefinite order to a
Cincinnati bookseller to put up twenty dollars' worth of the best books
for a lady, which order was filled by a collection of the Annuals of six
years back and a few unsalable modern novels. I read them all most
conscientiously and gratefully, and would not listen for a moment to Mr.
Hammond's jests about them; but, a few weeks afterwards, I almost
repented of my complaisance, when Tom Salyers took me at an advantage
while rowing me down to Louisa one afternoon, and, seeing a long stretch
of river before him without shoal or sand-bar, leisurely laid up his
oars, and, letting the boat float with the stream, asked me, abruptly,
to marry him, and go with him up into the country to a new place which
he meant to clear and farm.

I laughed at him at first, but he persisted till I was forced to believe
him in earnest; and then I told him how foolish he was to fancy an ugly,
sallow-looking girl like me, who had no father nor mother, when he might
take one of John Mills's rosy daughters, or go down to Catlettsburg and
get somebody whose father would give him a farm already cleared.

"You are laughing at me, Janet," he said. "I know I am not smart enough
for you, nor hardly fit to keep company with you, now that Hammond has
taught you so many things that are proper for a lady to know; but I love
you true, and if you can only fancy me, I'll work so hard that you'll be
able to keep a hired girl and have all your time for reading and going
about the woods as you like to do. And you'll be in your own house,
instead of under Squire Boarders and his sharp-spoken wife. Couldn't you
fancy me after a while? I'd