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On their return to the house, they found the new visiter quietly installed in the parlor, and waiting their, or rather her, return. In high glee with the flattering prospect before him, he completely monopolized Mary’s attention, and eventually put to flight the overpowered and mortified Kelson, who left the house with a heavy heart. For at least a week Mr. Millinet kept the field; he was Mary’s constant companion, whether sitting quietly at home or walking out; and Kelson, finding it almost impossible even to speak to her, prudently kept himself out of the way, well knowing that Mary would soon miss him, if she had not already, and eagerly seek an interview; nor was he wrong in his conjecture. Calling at her father’s house one Sunday morning, he found her seated in the parlor waiting for meeting time. In the course of conversation he asked her jestingly, though with a beating heart, “what she meant to do with her new lover?”

“I don’t know,” said she laughing, “he says that he has my father’s permission to make love to me, and he seems determined that the permission shall not become a dead letter for want of use.”

“Your father! I had no idea that he had given his consent.”

“My father, Thomas, has given me free permission to do as I please in the affair of choosing a husband.”

“Certainly,” said poor Kelson, construing this last speech into sentence of death to his love.

“And I have already acted as I pleased,” continued the lovely girl, holding out her hand to him.

It was impossible to mistake the meaning of the last words and their accompanying action, and the delighted seaman certified his full intelligence and gratitude upon her lips.

“I believe this fellow, my sweet Mary, has made me almost jealous and quite foolish; but, seriously, what do you mean to do with him?”

“Why, the creature can’t stay here for ever, and if he offers himself to me, I shall say ‘No,’ in as plain English as possible.”

Mr. Millinet soon after made his appearance, and attended Captain Bowline and his daughter to meeting, to the no small surprise of the good folks of B—-, who, regarding him as the favored lover of Mary Bowline, could not help expressing their regret that she should have slighted Captain Kelson, and accepted “that tape-measuring son of a b—-.”

What a pity that sailors, and seafaring people at large, can seldom or never give vent to their indignation without at the same time attacking the parentage of the object of their resentment. This is decidedly an orientalism; and I have observed in another place that sailors resemble the Orientals in their fondness for tropes and figures. The most opprobrious epithet that a Persian can make use of, when in a passion, is to call his antagonist “a dog’s uncle.” No other degree of canine consanguinity is considered so degrading.

The retailer of dry goods dined at the house of Captain Bowline, and attended the family to church in the afternoon, but excused himself immediately after the service was over and returned to the town. Kelson made a visit to the house of the old seaman just at dark, and on entering the usual sitting-room he found it unlighted, and occupied only by Dinah, the black girl, who, arrayed in what the old captain called her “go-ashore bib and tucker,” was probably awaiting the arrival of her woolly-headed suitor. The old gentleman had gone out visiting, as he usually did on Sunday evenings, and Mary was in a little back parlor, where she usually sat in her father’s absence, and which was the winter sitting-room of the family. Kelson had been in the house but a very few minutes when he saw his rival approaching the front gate. With all that propensity for mischief that characterizes sailors on shore, he immediately formed, and proceeded to put in execution, a plan for the torment and vexation of his antagonist of the yard-stick. He promised the sable handmaid of his Mary a half dollar, if she would personate her mistress for a few minutes, which he imagined easily enough done in the dark, and instructing her “to behave prim and lady-like,” went in quest of the boy Jim, whom he stationed in the entry to open the door for Mr. Millinet, and show him into the front parlor, and then went to the room where the fair lady herself was sitting. She was just on the point of coming to the front room with a light, having heard his well-known voice and step, but he easily engaged her in conversation; and when, at Millinet’s knock, she was rising to see who it was, he as easily detained her by the assurance, that it was “nobody but her New York sweetheart.” Every thing favored the mischievous plans of the seaman: Millinet never suspecting that any female but the mistress of the house would presume to seat herself in the front parlor, and feeling moreover the darkness and solitude of the room peculiarly favorable to courtship, seated himself by the side of the supposed Mary, and immediately commenced making love in pretty “rapid” style. Finding that the lady answered only in monosyllables, and seemed more than usually affable, he ventured to take her hand and gently squeeze it. He was at first somewhat startled at the hardness and roughness of the palm, but soon recollected that the country ladies in New England were in the habit of milking their cows, making butter and cheese, etc., and said to himself, “Never mind, when she is Mrs. Millinet her hard palms shall be well rubbed with pumice-stone and milk of roses, till they are as soft as any lady’s in Broadway.”