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Our Second Girl
by
Why won’t women sometimes enlighten a fellow a little in this dark valley that lies between intimate acquaintance and the awful final proposal? To be sure, there are kind souls who will come more than halfway to meet you, but they are always sure to be those you don’t want to meet. The woman you want is always as reticent as a nut, and leaves you the whole work of this last dread scene without a bit of help on her part. To be sure, she smiles on you; but what of that? You see she smiles also on Tom, Dick, and Harry.
“Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike;
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.”
I fought out a battle of two or three weeks with my fair foe, trying to get in advance some hint from her as to what she would do with me if I put myself at her mercy. No use. Our sex may as well give up first as last before one of these quiet, resolved, little pieces of femininity, who are perfect mistresses of all the peculiar weapons, defensive and offensive, of womanhood. There was nothing for it but to surrender at discretion; but when I had done this, I was granted all the honors of war. Mrs. McIntyre received me with an old-fashioned maternal blessing, and all was as happy as possible.
“And now,” said Mary, “I suppose, sir, you will claim a right to know all about me.”
“Something of the sort,” I said complacently.
“I know you have been dying of curiosity ever since I was waiting behind your lordship’s chair at your mother’s. I knew you suspected something then,–confess now.”
“But what could have led you there?”
“Just hear. My mother, who was Mrs. McIntyre’s sister, had by a first marriage only myself. Shortly after my father’s death, she married a widower with several children. As long as she lived, I never knew what want or care or trouble was; but just as I was entering upon my seventeenth year she died. A year after her death, my stepfather, who was one of those men devoted to matrimony at all hazards, married another woman, by whom he had children.
“In a few years more, he died; and his affairs, on examination, proved to be in a very bad state; there was, in fact, scarcely anything for us to live on. Our stepmother had a settlement from her brother. The two other daughters of my father were married, and went to houses of their own; and I was left, related really to nobody, without property and without home.
“I suppose hundreds of young girls are from one reason or other left just in this way, and have, without any previous preparation in their education and habits, to face the question, How can I get a living?
“I assure you it is a serious question for a young girl who has grown up in the easy manner in which I had. My stepfather had always been a cheery, kindly, generous man, one of those who love to see people enjoy themselves, and to have things done handsomely, and had kept house in a free, abundant, hospitable manner; so that when I came to look myself over in relation to the great uses of life, I could make out very little besides expensive tastes and careless habits.
“I had been to the very best schools, but then I had studied, as most girls in easy circumstances do, without a thought of using my knowledge for any practical purpose. I could speak very fair English; but how I did it, or why, I didn’t know,–all the technical rules of grammar had passed from my head like a dream. I could play a little on the piano, and sing a few songs; but I did not know enough of music to venture to propose myself as a teacher; and so with every other study. All the situations of profit in the profession of teaching are now crowded and blocked by girls who have been studying for that express object,–and what could I hope among them?