Chapter I
“Jane, how can you tolerate that dull, spiritless creature? I never sat by his side for five minutes, without getting sleepy.”
“He does not seem so very dull to me, Cara,” replied her companion.
“It is a true saying, that there never was a Jack without a Jill; but I could not have believed that my friend Jane Emory would have been willing to be the Jill to such a Jack.”
A slight change was perceptible in the countenance of Jane Emory, and for a moment the color deepened on her cheek. But when she spoke in reply to her friend’s remark, no indication that she felt its cutting import, was perceptible.
“I am convinced, from close observation of Walter Gray,” said Jane, “that he has in his character that which should ever protect him from jest or ridicule.”
“And what is that, my lady Jane?”
“Right thoughts and sound principles.”
“Fiddle stick!”
These should not only be respected, but honored wherever found,” said Jane, gravely.
“In a bear or a boor!” Cara responded, in a tone of irony.
“My friend Cara is ungenerous in her allusions. Surely, she will not assert that Walter Gray is a bear or a boor?”
“He is boorish enough, at any rate.”
“There I differ with you, Cara. His manner is not so showy, nor his attentions to the many little forms and observances of social life, so prompt as to please the fastidious in these matters. These defects, however, are not defects of character, but of education. He has not mingled enough in society to give him confidence.”
“They are defects, and are serious enough to make him quite offensive to me. Last evening, at Mrs. Clinton’s party, I sat beside him for half an hour, and was really disgusted with his marked disregard of the little courtesies of social life.”
“Indeed!” replied Jane, her manner becoming more serious, “and in what did these omissions consist?”
“Why, in the first place, while we were conversing,
