He kept the most careful eye on every possible source of disturbance to this quietly maturing plan.  He had no objection to have Gifted Hopkins about Myrtle as much as she would endure to have him.  The youthful bard entertained her very innocently with his bursts of poetry, but she was in no danger from a young person so intimately associated with the yard-stick, the blunt scissors, and the brown-paper parcel.  There was Cyprian too, about whom he did not feel any very particular solicitude.  Myrtle had evidently found out that she was handsome and stylish and all that, and it was not very likely she would take up with such a bashful, humble, country youth as this.  He could expect nothing beyond a possible rectorate in the remote distance, with one of those little pony chapels to preach in, which, if it were set up on a stout pole, would pass for a good-sized martin-house.  Cyprian might do to practise on, but there was no danger of her looking at him in a serious way.  As for that youth, Clement Lindsay, if he had not taken himself off as he did, Murray Bradshaw confessed to himself that he should have felt uneasy.  He was too good-looking, and too clever a young fellow to have knocking about among fragile susceptibilities.  But on reflection he saw there could be no danger.

“All up with him,—­poor diavolo!  Can’t understand it—­such a little sixpenny miss—­pretty enough boiled parsnip blonde, if one likes that sort of thing—­pleases some of the old boys, apparently.  Look out, Mr. L. remember Susanna and the Elders.  Good!

“Safe enough if something new doesn’t turn up.  Youngish.  Sixteen’s a little early.  Seventeen will do.  Marry a girl while she’s in the gristle, and you can shape her bones for her.  Splendid creature without her trimmings.  Wants training.  Must learn to dance, and sing something besides psalm-tunes.”

Mr. Bradshaw began humming the hymn, “When I can read my title clear,” adding some variations of his own.  “That ’s the solo for my prima donna!”

In the mean time Myrtle seemed to be showing some new developments.  One would have said that the instincts of the coquette, or at least of the city belle, were coming uppermost in her nature.  Her little nervous attack passed away, and she gained strength and beauty every day.  She was becoming conscious of her gifts of fascination, and seemed to please herself with the homage of her rustic admirers.  Why was it that no one of them had the look and bearing of that young man she had seen but a moment the other evening?  To think that he should have taken up with such a weakling as Susan Posey!  She sighed, and not so much thought as felt how kind it would have been in Heaven to have made her such a man.  But the image of the delicate blonde stood between her and all serious thought of Clement Lindsay.  She saw the wedding in the distance, and very foolishly thought to herself that she could not and would not go to it.