And when little Ann Mipps, at the toll-gate, came out with her
chubby cheeks burning, and her shy eyes down, he took no notice at all.
Nice little midge of a thing; but what did she know of the thrilling
"Personals" of the "Ledger" and their mysterious meaning, beginning at
the matrimonial advertisements last May? or of these letters in his
breast-pocket from the widow of an affectionate and generous disposition
and easy income on Callowhill, or from the confiding Estelle, whose
maiden aunt dragonized her on Ridge Road above Parrish? When he saw them
once, fate would speak out. Something in him was made for better things
than this flat life: "instincts of chivalry and kindred souls,"--quoting
Estelle's last letter. Poor Ann! he wondered if they had toffy-pullings
at Mipps's now. He hadn't been there since April. Such a dog-trot sort
of love-making that used to be! And Andy stopped to give a quart of milk
to a seamstress who came out of Poole's cheap boarding-house, and who,
by the bye, had just been imbibing the fashion-book literature on which
he had been living lately. A sort of weak wine-whey, that gives to the
brains of that class a perpetual tipsiness.
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