these families the young ladies talk openly of their lovers, and
generally prefer that subject of conversation to any other. Such a
family--so little mysterious--so open in their arrangements, was that of
the Burtons at Stratton. The reserve in the reserved families is usually
atoned for by the magnificence of the bridal arrangements, when the
marriage is at last solemnized; whereas, among the other set--the people
who have no reserve--the marriage, when it comes, is customarily an
affair of much less outward ceremony. They are married without blast of
trumpet, with very little profit to the confectioner, and do their
honeymoon, if they do it at all, with prosaic simplicity.

Florence had made up her mind that she would be in no hurry about it.
Harry was in a hurry; but that was a matter of course. He was a
quick-blooded, impatient, restless being. She was slower, and more given
to consideration. It would be better that they should wait, even if it
were for five or six years. She had no fear of poverty for herself. She
had lived always in a house in which money was much regarded, and among
people who were of inexpensive habits. But such had not been his lot,
and it was her duty to think of the mode of life which might suit him.
He would not be happy as a poor man--without comforts around him, which
would simply be comforts to him though they would be luxuries to her.
When her mother told her, shaking her head rather sorrowfully as she
heard Florence talk, that she did not like long engagements, Florence
would shake hers too, in playful derision, and tell her mother not to be
so suspicious. "It is not you that are going to marry him, mamma."

"No, my dear; I know that. But long engagements never are good. And I
can't think why young people should want so many things, now, that they
used to do without very well when I was married. When I went into
housekeeping, we only had one girl of fifteen to do everything; and we
hadn't a nursemaid regular till Theodore was born; and there were three
before him."

Florence could not say how many maid-servants Harry might wish to have
under similar circumstances, but she was very confident that he would
want much more attendance than her father and mother had done, or even
than some of her brothers and sisters. Her father, when he first
married, would not have objected, on returning home, to find his wife in
the kitchen, looking after the progress of the dinner; nor even would
her br