There is something inexorable in the purpose of a maiden lady--perhaps because she has no minor domestic troubles to distract her; and when you have two maiden ladies working on the same problem, and both of them possessed of wealth and unusual intelligence--! They started by taking Martha to North East Harbor for the balance of the summer, and then to keep her from going west in the fall, they engaged her to teach them French that winter at quite a fabulous salary.

They also took her to Boston and bought her some of the prettiest dresses imaginable; and the longer they knew her, the more they liked her; and the more they liked her, the more they tried to enlist her sympathies in behalf of poor Josiah--and the more they tried to throw their brother into Martha's private company.
"Look here," he said one day, when his two sisters were pushing him too hard.

"What's all this excitement about Martha?
Who is she, anyway ?" "Why, don't you know!" Cordelia sweetly asked him, and drawing a full breath she added: "Martha--is--your--future--wife--" If you had been there, you would have been pardoned for thinking that the last of the Spencers had suddenly discovered that he was sitting upon a remonstrative bee.
The two sisters smiled at him--rather nervously, it is true, but still they kept their hands upon their brother's shoulders, as though they were two nurses soothing a patient and saying: "There, now ...

The-e-e-ere ...
Just be quiet and you'll feel better in a little while." "Yes, dear," whispered Cordelia, her mouth ever so close to his ear.
"Your future wife--and the mother of your future children--" "Nonsense, nonsense--" muttered Josiah, breaking away quite flustered.
"I'm--I'm too old--" Almost speaking in concert they told him about Captain Abner Spencer who had children until he was sixty, and Ezra Babcock, father-in-law of the third Josiah Spencer, who had a son proudly born to him in his sixty-fourth year.
"And she's such a lovely girl," said Cordelia earnestly.

"Patty and I are quite in love with her ourselves--" "And think what it would mean to your peace of mind to have another son--" "And what it would mean to Spencer & Son--!" Josiah groaned at that.