Augustus Richards had set up for the
winner of his affections. She was fond of poetry and of music. She was a
student of letters, and a clever talker on almost all the arts and
sciences in which Mr. Augustus Richards delighted. But, alas! physically
she was not what he could admire. She was small and insignificant in
appearance. She was pallid-faced, and, it must be confessed, extremely
scant of locks; and the idea of marrying her was to Mr. Augustus
Richards little short of preposterous. Others, there were, too, who
attracted him in some measure, but who likewise repelled him in
equal, if not greater measure.
What he wanted Mrs. Augustus Richards to be was a composite of the
best in the beautiful Miss Fotheringay, the intellectual Miss
Patterson, the comfortably rich but extremely loud Miss Barrows, with a
dash of the virtues of all the others thrown in.
For years he looked for such a one, but season after season passed away
and the ideal failed to materialize, as unfortunately most ideals have a
way of doing, and hither and yon Mr. Augustus Richards went unmarried,
and, as society said, a hopelessly confirmed old bachelor--more's the
pity.
II
MISS HENDERSON'S STANDARD
Miss Flora Henderson was born and bred in Boston, and, like Mr. Augustus
Richards, had reached the age of thirty without having yielded to the
allurements of matrimony. This was not because she had not had the
opportunity, for opportunity she had had in greatest measure.
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