The young girl looked down, and blushed.
"Oh, I see how it is, Woodruff! You will soon lose your daughter.
I wonder that you have kept her so long. But who are these young
ladies?" he continued, as three girls very demurely entered the
room.
"The two youngest are my darters, by my last wife, who, I fear, mean
soon to follow the bad example of their sister. The other LADY,"
said the old man, with a reverential air, "is a PARTICULAR friend
of my eldest darter's."
My brother laughed slily, and the old man's cheek took a deeper glow
as he stooped forward to mix the punch.
"You said that these two young ladies, Woodruff, were by your last
wife. Pray how many wives have you had?"
"Only three. It is impossible, they say in my country, to have too
much of a good thing."
"So I suppose you think," said my brother, glancing first at the old
man and then towards Miss Smith. "Three wives! You have been a
fortunate man, Woodruff, to survive them all."
"Ay, have I not, Mr. S - -? But to tell you the truth, I have been
both lucky and unlucky in the wife way," and then he told us the
history of his several ventures in matrimony, with which I shall not
trouble my readers.
