Bowerton asked no more.  Brussels carpets, religious tendencies, a bank account, the ability to live on the best that the market afforded, and to eat it from china, and china only—­why, either one of these qualifications was a voucher of respectability, and any two of them constituted a patent of aristocracy of the Bowerton standard.

Bowerton opened its doors, and heartily welcomed Mrs. and Miss Wyett.

It is grievous to relate, but the coming of the estimable people was the cause of considerable trouble in Bowerton.

Bowerton, like all other places, contained lovers, and some of the young men were not so blinded by the charms of their own particular lady friends as to be oblivious to the beauty of Miss Wyett.

She was extremely modest and retiring, but she was also unusually handsome and graceful, and she had an expression which the young men of Bowerton could not understand, but which they greatly admired.

It was useless for plain girls to say that they couldn’t see anything remarkable about Miss Wyett; it was equally unavailing for good-looking girls to caution their gallants against too much of friendly regard even for a person of whose antecedents they really knew scarcely anything.

Even casting chilling looks at Miss Wyett when they met her failed to make that unoffending young lady any less attractive to the young men of Bowerton, and critical analysis of Miss Wyett’s style of dressing only provoked manly comparisons, which were as exasperating as they were unartistic.

Finally Jack Whiffer, who was of a first family, and was a store-clerk besides, proposed to Miss Wyett and was declined; then the young ladies of Bowerton thought that perhaps Helen Wyett had some sense after all.

Then young Baggs, son of a deceased Congressman, wished to make Miss Wyett mistress of the Baggs mansion and sharer of the Baggs money, but his offer was rejected.

Upon learning this fact, the maidens of Bowerton pronounced Helen a noble-spirited girl to refuse to take Baggs away from the dear, abused woman who had been engaged to him for a long time.

Several other young men had been seen approaching the Wyett cottage in the full glory of broadcloth and hair-oil, and were noticeably depressed in spirits for days afterward, and the native ladies of marriageable age were correspondingly elated when they heard of it.

When at last the one unmarried minister of Bowerton, who had been the desire of many hearts, manfully admitted that he had proposed and been rejected, and that Miss Wyett had informed him that she was already engaged, all the Bowerton girls declared that Helen Wyett was a darling old thing, and that it was perfectly shameful that she couldn’t be let alone.

After thus proving that their own hearts were in the right place, all the Bowerton girls asked each other who the lucky man could be.

Of course he couldn’t be a Bowerton man, for Miss Wyett was seldom seen in company with any gentleman.  He must he a Boston man—­he was probably very literary—­Boston men always were.