CHAPTER II.

My uncle Waldron, or Judge Waldron, for he had been promoted to “the bench,” was a bachelor—a hopelessly confirmed bachelor. Not that he under-valued woman—no—he regarded her with the noblest, loftiest, and most rational admiration of any man I ever knew. But his notions were peculiar, and perhaps not a little fastidious in the matter of what a _wife_ should be, so he never proposed himself as a husband to any lady of his widely extended and really valuable circle of acquaintances, to the infinite astonishment of some of them. In the course of _long years_ he became thoroughly tired of being a _boarder_—of never realizing any of the quiet pleasures and sympathies that cluster round the hearth and the heart of home. So he erected a beautiful villa, just a delightful drive from the city, adorned it within and without with all the decorations and elegancies which could be suggested by the highest refinement of taste, and a liberal expenditure of the amplest means, and then we surely thought, as who would not, that having built his nest, my uncle was about to choose his mate, and pass the winter of his life in the calm sunshine of domestic bliss. But we “reckoned without our host,” in that calculation. Uncle Waldron had other intentions.

Now cousin Sara was the eldest niece in the family circle, and from her very birth she had been uncle Theodore’s acknowledged favorite—even in her extreme babyhood he had condescended to take her in his arms, and rock her for half-an-hour—an instance of partiality, by which none of us could boast of being distinguished. We all wished that we could have been the eldest niece, so we could have been the favorite—how much more we wished we could be _just like_ cousin Sara.

Well, when his house was all complete, uncle Waldron proposed to Sara to assume the responsibilities of its mistress, and threatened, in a way she quite understood, to “cut her off with a shilling,” in case she declined, so she followed her own inclination, and very readily assented.

Cousin Sara was a star of the first magnitude in one of the most elegant and policed literary constellations in her native city. Faultlessly lovely in person, in manners, and in mind, her heart over-flowing with the freshest and most cheerful piety, woman’s brightest ornament, it was a mystery to us all, how she happened to live till she was twenty-seven years old, without taking those responsibilities which most of our sex, without a _tithe_ of her attractions or her abilities, assume, long enough before they have the maturity and richness of twenty-seven invaluable years in their favor—especially strange we thought it, when so many most enviable inducements had been urged upon her acceptance. But nobody seemed to please our fastidious cousin Sara.

When she had been some months at uncle Waldron’s, it became very evident to _us_, quizzical spies of _cousins_, who took great pleasure in spending a few weeks with her now and then, that she was more interested in the society and person of the Rev. Robert Greydon, than she was really willing we should discover. She hushed our impertinence in a moment, if we undertook to rally her on the subject, by a peculiarly imploring expression of countenance, which only made us think so all the more. Mr. Greydon, as has been already intimated, was the clergyman of the church where uncle Waldron worshiped. Cousin Sara had often declared that she would not marry a _clergyman_ or a _widower_. Mr. Greydon, though still a young man, united in his person _both_ those disqualifications, so we managed, in the face of all indications to the contrary, to conclude that we had nothing to fear. If he had _not_ been a widower and clergyman, we should have chosen him, out of all the world, for Sara’s husband—for he possessed all those rare and invaluable excellencies of character, which Sara deserved, if ever a lovely woman did, in the man of her choice.

Mr. Greydon was a very prudent man in his pastoral and social intercourse. He did not wish to give the “silly women” of his parish, who, as in duty bound, would keep a very faithful look-out after him, any occasion to tattle—but the arrangement of the German lessons was just the thing—it afforded him the most unimpeachable excuse for enjoying Sara’s society without sounding an alarum in any body’s ears.