was a discouragement to aggressive amiability.  The real difficulty was that not one of her adorers had ever greatly interested her.  It could not be that nature had made her insensible.  It must have been because the man who was made for her had never yet shown himself.  She was not easy to please, that was certain; and she was one of those young women who will not accept as a lover one who but half pleases them.  She could not pick up the first stick that fell in her way and take it to shape her ideal out of.  Many of the good people of the village doubted whether Euthymia would ever be married.

“There ’s nothing good enough for her in this village,” said the old landlord of what had been the Anchor Tavern.

“She must wait till a prince comes along,” the old landlady said in reply.  “She’d make as pretty a queen as any of them that’s born to it.  Wouldn’t she be splendid with a gold crown on her head, and di’monds a glitterin’ all over her!  D’ you remember how handsome she looked in the tableau, when the fair was held for the Dorcas Society?  She had on an old dress of her grandma’s,—­they don’t make anything half so handsome nowadays,—­and she was just as pretty as a pictur’.  But what’s the use of good looks if they scare away folks?  The young fellows think that such a handsome girl as that would cost ten times as much to keep as a plain one.  She must be dressed up like an empress,—­so they seem to think.  It ain’t so with Euthymy:  she’d look like a great lady dressed anyhow, and she has n’t got any more notions than the homeliest girl that ever stood before a glass to look at herself.”

In the humbler walks of Arrowhead Village society, similar opinions were entertained of Miss Euthymia.  The fresh-water fisherman represented pretty well the average estimate of the class to which he belonged.  “I tell ye,” said he to another gentleman of leisure, whose chief occupation was to watch the coming and going of the visitors to Arrowhead Village,—­“I tell ye that girl ain’t a gon to put up with any o’ them slab-sided fellahs that you see hangin’ raound to look at her every Sunday when she comes aout o’ meetin’.  It’s one o’ them big gents from Boston or New York that’ll step up an’ kerry her off.”

In the mean time nothing could be further from the thoughts of Euthymia than the prospect of an ambitious worldly alliance.  The ideals of young women cost them many and great disappointments, but they save them very often from those lifelong companionships which accident is constantly trying to force upon them, in spite of their obvious unfitness.  The higher the ideal, the less likely is the commonplace neighbor who has the great advantage of easy access, or the boarding-house acquaintance who can profit by those vacant hours when the least interesting of visitors is better than absolute loneliness,—­the less likely are these undesirable personages to be endured, pitied, and, if not embraced, accepted, for