We should have just lived quietly here, she and I, and I need never have thought"-- Mr.Denner flushed faintly in the firelight--"of marriage." Mr.Denner's mind had often traveled as far as this; he had even gone to the point of saying to himself that he wished one of the Misses Woodhouse would regard him with sentiments of affection, and he and Willie, free from Mary, could have a home of their own, instead of forlornly envying the rector and Henry Dale.
But Mr.Denner had never said which Miss Woodhouse; he had always thought of them, as he would have expressed it, "collectively," nor could he have told which one he most admired,--he called it by no warmer name, even to himself.
But as he sat here alone, and remembered the pleasant evening he had had, and watched his fire smoulder and die, and heard the soft sigh of the rising wind, he reached a tremendous conclusion.

He would make up his mind.

He would decide which of the Misses Woodhouse possessed his deeper regard.

"Yes," he said, as he lifted first one foot and then the other over the fender, and, pulling his little coat-tails forward under his arms, stood with his back to the fireplace,--"yes, I will make up my mind; I will make it up to-morrow.

I cannot go on in this uncertain way.
I cannot allow myself to think of Miss Ruth, and how she would paint her pictures, and play my accompaniments, and then find my mind on Miss Deborah's dinners.