All that afternoon Mag tripped with unwonted gaiety about the house.  A weight was lifted from her heart, for in her estimation any one whom her father would marry was preferable to Mrs. Carter.

* * * * *

Oh, how the widow scolded the daughter, and how the daughter laughed at the widow, when she related the particulars of her call.

“Lenora, what could have possessed you to tell such a lie?” said Mrs. Carter.

“Not so fast, mother mine,” answered Lenora. “’Twasn’t a lie.  Mr. Hamilton is engaged to a lady from the East.  He did flirt with her in his younger days; and, pray, didn’t he have to come East when be called to inquire after his beloved classmates, and ended by getting checkmated!  Besides, I think you ought to thank me for turning the channel of gossip in another direction, for now you will be saved from all impertinent questions and remarks.”

This mode of reasoning failed to convince the widow, who felt quite willing that people should know of her flattering prospects; and when a few days after Mrs. Dr. Otis told her that Mrs. Kimball said that Polly Larkins said that her hired girl told her that Mrs. Kirby’s hired girl told her that she overheard Miss Kate telling her mother that Lenora Carter said that Mr. Hamilton was going to be married to her mother’s intimate friend, Mrs. Carter would have denied the whole and probably divulged her own secret, had not Lenora, who chanced to be present, declared, with the coolest effrontery, that ’twas all true—­that her mother had promised to stand up with them, and so folks would find it to be if they did not die of curiosity before autumn!

“Lenora, child, how can you talk so?” asked the distressed lady, as the door closed upon her visitor.

Lenora went off into fits of explosive laughter, bounding up and down like an india-rubber ball, and at last condescended to say, “I know what I’m about.  Do you want Mag Hamilton breaking up the match, as she surely would do, between this and autumn, if she knew it?”

“And what can she do?” asked Mrs. Carter.

“Why,” returned Lenora, “can’t she write to the place you came from, if, indeed, such a spot can be found?—­for I believe you sometimes book yourself from one town and sometimes from another.  But depend upon it you had better take my advice and keep still, and in the denouement which follows, I alone shall be blamed for a slight stretch of truth which you can easily excuse as ’one of dear Lenora’s silly, childish freaks!’”

Upon second thoughts, Mrs. Carter concluded to follow her daughter’s advice, and the next time Mr. Hamilton called, she laughingly told the story which Lenora had set afloat, saying, by way of excuse, that the dear girl did not like to hear her mother joked on the subject of matrimony, and had turned the attention of people another way.

Mr. Hamilton hardly relished this, and half wished, mayhap, as, indeed, gentlemen generally do in similar circumstances, that the little “objection” in the shape of Lenora had never had existence, or at least had never called the widow mother!