e renovation of
physical and moral health, and who, attracted by her pretty face and
figure, made his rustication less burdensome by devotion to her.

Jenny had not one of those weak natures whose influence dies away in
absence. She had inherited some of the old farmer's sturdy traits of
character, and her affections had a clinging tenacity of hold which
would not suffer the young scholar to throw her off so easily. When he
returned to college, he walked the grounds more than once, summoning
through the avenues of embowering elms the slender figure, the smiling
face, with the glow of the setting sun upon it, which had so often
awaited his coming at the stile of the old orchard.

However, parental authority, and the prospect of an ample fortune on
good behavior, soon convinced the young man of his folly. Let us be
thankful, who note this brief sketch of their mingled fortunes, that he
had a tender care for Jenny's trusting nature, and removed the sting
from the sorrow he inflicted by making her believe it inevitable. Thus
this little wellspring of romance forever watered and kept fresh her
otherwise withered life; if subdued, she was not bitter; and no one can
tell how the thin, wan face renewed its youth, and the wrinkled cheeks
their pinkish bloom, caught in that far-off spring-time in her father's
orchards, as, sitting in her solitary room, she remembered the man, now
occupying a prominent position in life, who said, as he bade her
tenderly good-bye, that he would never forget her, no matter what woman
reigned by his fireside, or what children played on his hearth. Perhaps,
in his stately library, no book was so welcome on a winter's evening as
an idyl of rural life, no picture so pleasing as that of some Maud
Muller raking hay or receiving the dumb caresses of the cows she milked.

What would the elegant woman, with her costly jewels, India shawls, and
splendid equipage, have thought of this whilom rival, who issued every
summer morning from the lane, in her hand a bunch of those simple
flowers, occupying, as she did, the border-ground between the wild
hemlock and honeysuckle of the wilderness and the exotic of the
parterre, the bachelor's-button, mulberry-pink, southernwood, and
bee-larkspur, destined to fill a tumbler on an end of the counter where
she displayed her most attractive goods?

She prided herself upon the tastefulness and variety of her selections:
ribbons and gowns, pins, needles, soap, and matches