The Argosy — page 228: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JENNY MORRIS’S VOYAGE. 1 ELL, then, there is nothing left for me to do but to go out to California !” The young lady who had arrived at this sudden determination and: thus avowed it, was a pretty girl of twenty-three, or thereabouts, with a graceful, well-developed form, a bright face, and a clear blushing complexion. She stood in the middle of her Aunt Morris’s dining-room, with an open letter in her hand, and an expression of annoyance contracting her broad clear brow. Her aunt, who was a timid hittle woman, with a timid voice, only ventured one remark in reply to this avowed resolution. It was, ‘ Yes.” But if ever that monosyllable expressed doubt, astonishment, dismay, and terror, it did so as it dropped slowly from Aunt Morris’s trembling lips. The state of the case was this. Jenny Morris and her twin-sister, Elsie, were orphans, to whom this same timid, flurried woman, although an old maid her- self, had been as true and efficient an adopted mother as if she had been six feet high, and with the resolution of an Amazon. ‘They lived together in the suburbs of our great city, in a secluded sort of way, being people of a good deal of pride and taste, and not unbounded means. They had a pleasant little circle of friends around them, retiring as they were, and read a great deal about the world, while they saw very little of it. Between one and two years ago, Jenny Morris had received the first great shock of her life. The sudden blow came from a dear hand— that of her sister Elsie. They were sitting together one evening, laughing about a large party they had been at the night before, and Jenny was speaking in much disparagement of a young man they had met there; one Mr. Edward West, recently from California. ‘““And the absurd attention he paid to you, Elsie! I pitied you extremely se Something in Elsie’s pretty face made her sister pause and start. A blushing smile, a glance, half confused, half proud, met her own, and then Elsie caught her hand and held it to her heart. “It is not the first time we have met him, by a good many, as you know, Jane. And—and it is quite a week now since it happened ; only I could not tell you.” “Since what happened ?” asked Jenny, in a dreadful fear—for she guessed it but too well. Mr. West, who had fallen in love with Elsie Morris, iis she with him, had received her promise to become his wife. As the blow, of hear- ing this, fell upon Jenny, she turned as white as death, and thought she COMICOOOKS.ECO© im