The New Mistress at Laurel Hill

"It's really quite provoking to trouble you with my debts so soon,"
said the lady, "but I dare say it's a maxim of yours that we should
have no secrets from each other, and so I may as well show you these
at once," and she turned into his lap a handful of bills, amounting
in all to four hundred dollars, due to the different tradesmen of
Troy.

The spot on the nose was decidedly purple, and had Katy or Matty
been there they would surely, have recognized the voice which began,
"Really, I did not expect this, and 'tis a max--"

"Never mind the maxim," and the mouth of the speaker was covered by
a dimpled hand, as Maude Glendower continued, "It's mean, I know,
but four hundred dollars is not much, after all, and you ought to be
willing to pay even more for me, don't you think so, dearest? "

"Ye-es," faintly answered the doctor, who, knowing there was no
alternative, gave a check for the whole amount on a Rochester bank,
where he had funds deposited.

Maude Glendower was a charming traveling companion, and in listening
to her lively sallies, and noticing the admiration she received, the
doctor forgot his lost four hundred dollars, and by the time they
reached Canandaigua he believed himself supremely happy in having
such a wife. John was waiting for them, just as thirteen years
before he had waited for blue-eyed Matty, and the moment her eye
fell upon the carriage he had borrowed from a neighbor, the new wife
exclaimed, "Oh, I hope that lumbering old thing is not ours. It
would give me the rickets to ride in it long."