It was generally given out that Mr.Meeks had a vague desire to get married, but, being a shy and timorous youth, lacked the moral courage to do so.

It was also well known that the Widow Conway had not buried her heart with the late lamented.

As to her shyness, that was not so clear.

Indeed, her attentions to Mr.Meeks, whose mother she might have been, were of a nature not to be misunderstood, and were not misunderstood by anyone but Mr.Meeks himself.
The widow carried on a dress-making establishment at her residence on the corner opposite Meeks's drug-store, and kept a wary eye on all the young ladies from Miss Dorothy Gibbs's Female Institute who patronized the shop for soda-water, acid-drops, and slate-pencils.

In the afternoon the widow was usually seen seated, smartly dressed, at her window upstairs, casting destructive glances across the street--the artificial roses in her cap and her whole languishing manner saying as plainly as a label on a prescription, "To be Taken Immediately!" But Mr.Meeks didn't take.
The lady's fondness, and the gentleman's blindness, were topics ably handled at every sewing-circle in the town.