gouty grandmamma, one day gaily shook his bridle-rein and galloped
away never to return. Wounded by the shafts of repeated ingratitude, can
it be wondered at that the heart of Martha Coacher should pant to find
rest somewhere? She listened to the proposals of the gawky gallant
honest boy, with great kindness and good-humour; at the end of his
speech she said, "Law, Bell, I'm sure you are too young to think of such
things;" but intimated that she too would revolve them in her own virgin
bosom. She could not refer Mr. Bell to her mamma, for Mr. Coacher was a
widower, and being immersed in his books, was of course unable to take
the direction of so frail and wondrous an article as a lady's heart,
which Miss Martha had to manage for herself.

A lock of her hair, tied up in a piece of blue ribbon, conveyed to the
happy Bell the result of the Vestal's conference with herself. Thrice
before had she snipt off one of her auburn ringlets, and given them
away. The possessors were faithless, but the hair had grown again:
and Martha had indeed occasion to say that men were deceivers when she
handed over this token of love to the simple boy.

Number 6, however, was an exception to former passions--Francis Bell was
the most faithful of lovers. When his time arrived to go to college, and
it became necessary to acquaint Mr. Coacher of the arrangements that had
been made, the latter cried, "God bless my soul, I hadn't the least idea
what was going on;" as was indeed very likely, for he had been taken in
three times before in precisely a similar manner; and Francis went to
the University resolved to conquer honours, so as to be able to lay them
at the feet of his beloved Martha.

This prize in view made him labour prodigiously. News came, term after
term, of the honours he won. He sent the prize-books for his college
essays to old Coacher, and his silver declamation cup to Miss Martha. In
due season he was high among the Wranglers, and a fellow of his
college; and during all the time of these transactions a constant tender
correspondence was kept up with Miss Coacher, to whose influence, and
perhaps with justice, he attributed the successes which he had won.

By the time, however, when the Rev. Francis Bell, M.A., and Fellow and
Tutor of his College, was twenty-six years of age, it happened that Miss
Coacher was thirty-four, nor had her charms, her manners, or her temper
improved since that sunny day in the springtime of life when he f