an would.

Now there were two tolerably rich girls in our parts: Miss Magdalen
Crutty, with twelve thousand pounds (and, to do her justice, as plain a
girl as ever I saw), and Miss Mary Waters, a fine, tall, plump, smiling,
peach-cheeked, golden-haired, white-skinned lass, with only ten. Mary
Waters lived with her uncle, the Doctor, who had helped me into the
world, and who was trusted with this little orphan charge very soon
after. My mother, as you have heard, was so fond of Bates, and Bates
so fond of little Mary, that both, at first, were almost always in our
house; and I used to call her my little wife as soon as I could speak,
and before she could walk almost. It was beautiful to see us, the
neighbors said.

Well, when her brother, the lieutenant of an India ship, came to be
captain, and actually gave Mary five thousand pounds, when she was about
ten years old, and promised her five thousand more, there was a great
talking, and bobbing, and smiling between the Doctor and my parents, and
Mary and I were left together more than ever, and she was told to call
me her little husband. And she did; and it was considered a settled
thing from that day. She was really amazingly fond of me.

Can any one call me mercenary after that? Though Miss Crutty had twelve
thousand, and Mary only ten (five in hand, and five in the bush), I
stuck faithfully to Mary. As a matter of course, Miss Crutty hated Miss
Waters. The fact was, Mary had all the country dangling after her, and
not a soul would come to Magdalen, for all her 12,000L. I used to be
attentive to her though (as it's always useful to be); and Mary would
sometimes laugh and sometimes cry at my flirting with Magdalen. This I
thought proper very quickly to check. "Mary," said I, "you know that my
love for you is disinterested,--for I am faithful to you, though Miss
Crutty is richer than you. Don't fly into a rage, then, because I pay
her attentions, when you know that my heart and my promise are engaged
to you."

The fact is, to tell a little bit of a secret, there is nothing like the
having two strings to your bow. "Who knows?" thought I. "Mary may die;
and then where are my 10,000L.?" So I used to be very kind indeed to
Miss Crutty; and well it was that I was so: for when I was twenty and
Mary eighteen, I'm blest if news did not arrive that Captain Waters,
who was coming home to England with all his money in rupees, had been
taken--ship, rupees, self and all--by a Frenc