I am loath to have it supposed that Helen turned out a silly young woman. Indeed, it would be wrong to believe so; for she possessed many good parts and acquirements. But I must confess that her fancy, being naturally lively, was unduly stimulated by reading too many books of the kind I have mentioned; and that seeing but little of the world in her tender years, she learned from their pages to form false and extravagant notions concerning it. She used to build castles in the air, was subject to fits of tender melancholy, and, like Miss Cornelia, adored moonlight, pensive music, and sentimental poetry. But she would have shrunk from contact with a brigand, in a sugar-loaf hat, with a carbine slung across his shoulder, and a stiletto in his sash, with precisely the same kind and degree of horror and disgust that would have affected her in the presence of a vulgar footpad, in a greasy Scotch-cap, armed with a horse-pistol and a sheath-knife. Her romantic tastes differed in many respects from her Aunt Cornelia’s. She, too, had an ideal lover; (and for that matter the fickle little maid had several;) but the special favorite was a charming young fellow, of fair complexion, with blue eyes, and a light, elegant moustache, his long brown hair falling down his neck in wavy masses,—tall in stature, athletic, and yet slim and graceful,—gifted with many accomplishments, with a heart full of noble qualities, and a brain inspired by genius,—a poet, or an author, or an artist, perhaps a lawyer merely, but of rare talents, at any rate a man of superior intellect,—in a word, a paragon, who, when he should appear upon the earth, incarnate, she expected would conceive a violent passion for her, in which case, she———should take it into consideration whether to marry him or not.
My inexperience in the art of story-telling must be manifest to everybody; for here I am talking of Helen, as of a young lady of sixteen or more, with shy notions of beaux and lovers in her head, whereas, in point of time, my story has not advanced by regular stages beyond the period of her childhood, when she thought more of a single doll in her baby-house, and held her in higher estimation, than the whole rising generation of the other sex. I shall resume the thread of my narrative by relating, that, some two or three years before Miss Cornelia Bugbee, in her journey across the sands of time, came to the thirtieth mile-stone, she arrived at an oasis in the desert of her existence; or, to be more explicit, she had the rare good-fortune to find a heart throbbing in unison with her own,—a tender bosom in whose fidelity she could safely confide even her most precious secret; namely, the passion she entertained for the aforementioned corsair,—a being of congenial soul, whose loving ears could hear and interpret her lowest whisper and most incoherent murmur, by means of the subtile instinct of spiritual sympathy,—in fine, a trusty, true, and confidential friend.
All this, and more, was Miss Laura Stebbins, the youngest sister of Mrs. Jaynes, who, being suddenly left an orphan, dependent on the charity of her kindred, came to reside at the parsonage in Belfield. An intimacy forthwith commenced between the Doctor’s daughter and the Parson’s sister-in-law, which ripened speedily into the enduring friendship of which mention has just been made. There were some who affected to wonder at the ardent attachment which sprung up between the two young ladies, because, forsooth, one was but sixteen, and the other eight-and-twenty; as if this slight disparity in years must necessarily engender a diversity of tastes, fatal to a budding friendship.
I would fain describe the person of Miss Laura Stebbins, if I could call to mind any similitudes, whereunto to liken her charms, which have not been worn out in the service of other people’s heroines. To use any but brand-new comparisons to illustrate graces like hers would be singularly inappropriate; for she herself always had a bright, fresh look, like some piece of handiwork just
