himself by flirting with little Mary Jones, and making her lover, as he more than suspected him to be, miserable during his (Van Trump's) stay in the vicinity. But Bridget's patron saint caused him to forget his resolve the moment he had taken the figure into his hand.
"By Jove!" said he ingenuously, "it is wonderful! by Jove, it is! and as good as What-d'ye-call-em, the great modeller's, in Paris. I can guess now what was in the cloth on the table: something pretty for Miss Mary Jones, I'll be bound. I'll ask her to show it to me, and I'll get him to let me see his Madonna, and Bridget's likeness, and the rest. I'll make friends with him, I will, by Jove!" cried our young dilletanti, and meant all he said.
Even pretty Mary Jones had not seen what the thick cloth concealed the night before, until Miss Simmons had been duly escorted home, over the way, and young Van Trump, believing the enemy to have abandoned the field, went away himself. That young gentleman, however, would have smoked his cigar with less gusto on his way to bed, had he surmised that, however his whispered flatteries had fluttered the little heart of our heroine, and for the matter of that of castle-building mamma also, not one pang of jealousy had he yet created in the breast of his single-minded rival. Why should he (Elkhart) have been miserable? He had formed his own estimate of the worth of elegant Mr. Clarence, and scarce troubled himself, save in one instance, to enter the lists into which that accomplished cavalier desired to lure him, sure of victory in the end. While Mr. Clarence was turning the music, and singing second, and otherwise manifesting his interest and admiration, though secretly amused and purposing to take it all off to a few of his friends in the city some day after dinner, Elkhart stood by with an ear only for the one voice out of three, which to him always discoursed melody. For him there were no jingling keys in the whole ricketty piano-forte, no false note in Miss Columbia's singing, even when she dropped her handkerchief and picked it up tittering, (Mr. Clarence feigning blindness on the occasion,) and fell again into her place in the concert. For him "Mary Jones" was a name interchangeable with "angel," and where she dwelt by no means the humble residence the widow's house In reality was, and such as Mr. Clarence unmistakably perceived it.
