He may do better this second time." Miss Garth looked up in astonishment.
"And suppose he does better ?" she asked.

"What then ?" Mrs.Vanstone cut off a loose thread in her work, and laughed outright.
"My good friend," she said, "there is an old farmyard proverb which warns us not to count our chickens before they are hatched.

Let us wait a little before we count ours." It was not easy to silence Miss Garth, when she was speaking under the influence of a strong conviction; but this reply closed her lips.

She resumed her work, and looked, and thought, unutterable things.
Mrs.Vanstone's behavior was certainly remarkable under the circumstances.

Here, on one side, was a girl--with great personal attractions, with rare pecuniary prospects, with a social position which might have justified the best gentleman in the neighborhood in making her an offer of marriage--perversely casting herself away on a penniless idle young fellow, who had failed at his first start in life, and who even if he succeeded in his second attempt, must be for years to come in no position to marry a young lady of fortune on equal terms.