Mary Gordon was the daughter of a farmer living near Keene, N. H.,
and was a handsome girl about twenty years of age. She was going,
she told me, to visit some friends in Bennington, and would be there
about a month, during which time, if I was in that vicinity, she
hoped I would come and see her. We parted very lovingly, and when
she had been in Bennington a few days she wrote to me, setting a
time for me to visit her; but in business in Brattleboro was too
good to leave, and I so wrote to her. Whereupon, in another week,
she came back to Brattleboro and proposed to finish the remainder of
her visit there, thus blinding her friends at home who would think
she was all the while at Bennington.
Our brief acquaintance when she was at the house before, attracted
no particular attention, and when she came now I told the landlord
that she was my cousin, and he gave her a room and I paid her bills.
The cousin business was a full cover to our intimacy; she sat next
to me at the table, rode about with me to see my patients, and when
I went to places near by to sell medicine, and we were almost
constantly together. Of course, we were engaged to be married, and
that very soon.
In a fortnight after her arrival I went home with her to her
father's farm near Keene, and she told her mother that we were
"engaged." The old folks thought they would like to know me a little
better, but she said we were old friends, she knew me thoroughly,
and meant to marry me. There was no further objection on the part of
her parents, and in the few days following she and her mother were
busily engaged in preparing her clothes and outfit.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80