[Continued.]
CHAPTER XII.
MISS PRISSY.
Will our little Mary really fall in love with the Doctor?--The question
reaches us in anxious tones from all the circle of our readers; and what
especially shocks us is, that grave doctors of divinity, and serious,
stocking-knitting matrons, seem to be the class who are particularly
set against the success of our excellent orthodox hero, and bent on
reminding us of the claims of that unregenerate James, whom we have sent
to sea on purpose that our heroine may recover herself of that foolish
partiality for him which all the Christian world seems bent on
perpetuating.
"Now, really," says the Rev. Mrs. Q., looking up from her bundle of
Sewing-Society work, "you are _not_ going to let Mary marry the
Doctor?"
My dear Madam, is not that just what you did, yourself, after having
turned off three or four fascinating young sinners as good as James any
day? Don't make us believe that you are sorry for it now!
"Is it possible," says Dr. Theophrastus, who is himself a stanch
Hopkinsian divine, and who is at present recovering from his last grand
effort on Natural and Moral Ability,--"is it possible that you are going
to let Mary forget that poor young man and marry Dr.
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