PETERSON’S MAGAZINE.
THE "DANDY FROM BOSTON."
BY JAMES H. DANA.
At sixteen, Kate Stanley was the belle of Leicester. She was beautiful as a rose-bud, merry as a Virginia reel, and witty as Sheridan. "So this young dandy from Boston," she said, " boasts that he can have any of us country girls whenever he pleases."
"He has but to throw his handkerchief, Ned tell me he says," answered her cousin, "and the favored one will be his slave thankfully."
Ned Dudley, Jeanie's betrothed husband, knew all the young men of the village, as well as every visitor of note, and was in a way, therefore, to hear everything that passed. There could be no doubt consequently of the aspersion.
"We Bhall see," replied Kate, with a toss of the head. "I never have flirted yet, but I'll do it now, if it's possible. This puppy needs a lesson. Does he think we're Circassian girls, put up at auction, while he sits smoking, half asleep, like a Turk, and bidding off the prettiest?"
Kate had never been so angry in her life. Her whole sex had been insulted, and she determined to avenge them.
In a little while, Harry Nelson, the "dandy from Boston," became a declared admirer of Kate. He was at her father's nearly every evening, sent her bouquets almost daily, and was constantly seen escorting ber through the streets. Every Sunday, he either came to her church to service, or was waiting at the door when she went out. She was his partner at all the picnics of the season. Everybody said that the couple were engaged.
But Kate kept her own counsel. If she persisted in her original intention, she was playing her cards so adroitly, that she seemed, even to her closest friends, to be really in earnest. When Harry was by she had eyes for no one else. She always managed that he should find her dis engaged for the first dance at every party. She sang her best songs for him, dressed in his colors, and even admired his favorite authors, though they happened to be those she had formerly detested most. Harry piqued himself on many things. In his own eyes nobody dressed with such taste as himself, nobody danced as gracefully, nobody used such elegant language in conversation. But he prided himself especially on his guitar playing. The highest compliment he could pay a lady, in his own estimation, was to serenade ber, not, as too many do, through hired musi cians, but with his own voice and instrument : and this compliment he resolved to pay Kate. That night Jeanie was rooming with her cousin. The young men of the town, it was known, were to be out serenading; but as Ned Dudley had gone to Boston, and Jeanie knew there would be no music under her own window, she had come to Kate's. It was a bright moon light evening, and as the serenaders were heard singing, long before they reached Mr. Stanley's, the girls peeped out between the curtains to see if Harry was of the party. "There he is, sure enough," said Kate, "and with his guitar. Now l'sten, cousin mine." Directly footsteps were heard beneath the casement, there was a suppressed murmur of voices, and then deep silence, followed by the "thrum, thrum," of a guitar. In a moment more, Harry began to sing, " Wake, lady, wake." " He looks excessively sentimental," whispered Kate, peeping out from her shelter. "No doubt he thinks he's a Spanish cavalier." And the merriment being infectious, Jeanie laughed with her, till they could scarcely keep from being overheard. The first verse was finished. Harry, turning up his eyes romantically, had begun the second, "Wake, lady, wake," accompanying it with the monotonous "thrum, thrum, thrum," when Kate cried, loud enough for all the serenaders to hear, and in a voice almost choking with merriment,
