Now it was too late.

She had "declined," as Tennyson says, "on a lower love than mine"-- on Fred Hencoop's.
The thought was despair.

Never did I realized of what the human heart is capable until Belle came into the store, one lovely spring morning, looking like a seraph in a new spring bonnet, and blushingly--with a saucy flash of her dark eyes that made her rising color all the more divine--inquired for table-damask and 4-4 sheetings.
With an ashen brow and quivering lip, I displayed before her our best assortment of table-cloths and napkins, pillow-casing and sheeting.
Her mother accompanied her to give her the benefit of her experience; and kept telling her daughter to choose the best, and what and how many dozens she had before she was married.
They ran up a big bill at the store that morning, and father came behind the counter to help, and was mightily pleased; but I felt as if I were measuring off cloth for my own shroud.
"Come, John, you go do up the sugar for Widow Smith, her boy is waiting," said my parent, seeing the muddle into which I was getting things.

"I will attend to these ladies--twelve yards of the pillow-casing, did you say, Mrs.Marigold ?" I moved down to the end of the store and weighed and tied up in brown paper the "three pounds of white sugar to make cake for the sewin'-society," which the lad had asked for.

A little girl came in for a pound of bar-soap, and I attended to her wants.