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PAGE 9

Match-Making
by [?]

“Where is little Mary?” she at length asked.

The child was instantly brought to her.

“Does Mary love mother?” she asked of the child, in a tone of peculiar tenderness.

The child drew its little arms about her neck, and kissed her pale lips and cheeks fondly.

“Yes, Mary loves mother. But mother is going away to leave Mary. Will she be a good girl?”

The little thing murmured assent, as it clung closer to its mother’s bosom.

Mrs. Fenwick then looked up into the faces of her father and mother with a sad but tender smile, and said–

“You will be good to little Mary when I am gone?

“Don’t talk so, Mary!–don’t, my child! You are not going to leave us,” her mother sobbed, while the tears fell from her eyes like rain.

“Oh no, dear! you will not leave us,” said her father, in a trembling voice.

“Yes, dear mother! dear father! I must go. But you will not let any one take little Mary from you?”

“Oh no–ever! She is ours, and no one shall ever take her away.”

Mrs. Fenwick then closed her eyes, while a placid expression settled upon her sweet but careworn face. Again she looked up, but with a more serious countenance. As she did so, her eyes rested upon Mrs. Martindale.

“I am about to die, Mrs. Martindale,” she said, hit a calm but feeble voice–“and with my dying breath I charge upon you the ruin of my hopes and happiness. If my little girl should live to woman’s estate,” she added, turning to her parents, “guard her from the influence of this woman, as you would from the fangs of a serpent.”

Then closing her eyes again, she sank away into a sleep that proved the sleep of death. Alas! how many like her have gone down to an early grave, or still pine on in hopeless sorrow, the victims of that miserable interference in society, which is constantly bringing young people together, and endeavouring to induce them to love and marry each other, without there being between them any true congeniality or fitness for such a relation! Of all assumed social offices, that of the match-maker is one of the most pernicious, and her character one of the most detestable. She should be shunned with the same shrinking aversion with which we shun a serpent which crosses our path.