THE PROFIT AND LOSS. 7 



*' And lie goes to cliiircli every Sunday morning." 

 '' Oh ! yeS; miss ; I can see people in clmrch as well as 

 you, I liope 5 tlioug-h, perhaps, without looking so con- 

 stantly at them. It isn't that." 



^' And he doesn't swear, dear aunt." 



*' No ; I really trust he does not dis " 



*' Except, to be sure, when he was very violent in his 



protestations to me, and that " 



^' Thank Heaven, I know nothing- at all ahout." 

 And then came the cigars, and as it "wasn't that" 

 either — not his drinking, smoking, swearing, nor church- 

 going— Emmy hecame a little more confident, offered to 

 '^ give it up," and at length, pressing the old lady rather 

 closely, got out the grand secret in these words : — 



" Be keeps a race-horse,'' Miss Emma ; and in my 

 opinion a man that keeps a race-horse will very soon find 

 he can't keep a wife." 



That was a stopper certainly ; and the old woman gave 

 it out as if she thought so too. If I'd been ruined by 

 railroads, or found guilty of forgery, there might have 

 been hopes j but ^'he keeps a race-horse " was too much. 

 Poor Emmy shut up shop in half a second, and was as 

 jealous as possible of our mutual acquaintance, the 

 Mountain Maid, the next time she saw me. Evidently 

 it was a '' to be or not to be j" and " deeply engaged " as 

 I was, and somewhat staggered with our summer's run, 

 of second-rate success, no wonder I soon struck imder. 

 The marrying man against the racing man — ^^ heads !" for 

 the turf, and down it came for matrimony in the shape of 

 a woman. A breeder of the forbidden fruit, as if to sup- 

 port me in my good resolution, very politely became 

 "deceased" just at the time, and into his catalogue went 

 " my first love." At the end of the year, with a staring 



