MR. CHAINMAIL. I would choose you from all the world, were you even the
daughter of the executeur des hautes oeuvres, as the heroine of a romantic story
I once read turned out to be.
MISS SUSANNAH. I am satisfied. You have now a right to know my history, and
if you repent, I absolve you from all obligations.
She told him her history; but he was out of the reach of repentance. "It is true," as
at a subsequent period he said to the captain, "she is the daughter of a money-
changer: one who, in the days of Richard the First, would have been plucked by
the beard in the streets: but she is, according to modern notions, a lady of gentle
blood. As to her father's running away, that is a minor consideration: I have
always understood, from Mr. Mac Quedy, who is a great oracle in this way, that
promises to pay ought not to be kept; the essence of a safe and economical
currency being an interminable series of broken promises. There seems to be a
difference among the learned as to the way in which the promises ought to be
broken; but I am not deep enough in this casuistry to enter into such nice
distinctions."
In a few days there was a wedding, a pathetic leave-taking of the farmer's family,
a hundred kisses from the bride to the children, and promises twenty times
reclaimed and renewed, to visit them in the ensuing year.
