It is impracticable; it is almost improper.

To-morrow I will decide." To have reached this conclusion was to have accomplished a great deal.
Mr.Denner went to bed much cheered; but he dreamed of walking about Miss Ruth's studio, and admiring her pictures, when, to his dismay, he found Mary had followed him, and was saying she couldn't bear things all of a clutter.
The next morning he ate his breakfast in solemn haste; it was to be an important day for him.

He watched Mary as she walked about, handing him dishes with a sternness which had always awed him into eating anything she placed before him, and wondered what she would think when she heard--He trembled a little at the thought of breaking it to her; and then he remembered Miss Ruth's kind heart, and he had a vision of a pension for Mary, which was checked instantly by the recollection of Miss Deborah's prudent economy.
"Ah, well," he thought, "I shall know to-night.

Economy is a good thing,--Miss Ruth herself would not deny that." He went out to his office, and weighed and balanced his inclinations until dinner-time, and again in the afternoon, but with no result.

Night found him hopelessly confused, with the added grievance that he had not kept his word to himself.
This went on for more than a week; by and by the uncertainty began to wear greatly upon him.
"Dear me!" he sighed one morning, as he sat in his office, his little gaitered feet upon the rusty top of his air-tight stove, and his brierwood pipe at his lips--it had gone out, leaving a bowl of cheerless white ashes,--"dear me! I no sooner decide that it had better be Miss Deborah--for how satisfying my linen would be if she had an eye on the laundry, and I know she would not have bubble-and-squeak for dinner as often as Mary does--than Miss Ruth comes into my mind.