The Argosy — page 237: what you’re looking at

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

222 Winnifred Dee. “Tt occurred in this way. Mary Thorpe was to be married the next day. She and her mother had had their bonnets at Miss Dee’s. I was over at the farmer’s that afternoon, attending the little lad who was ill, and heard a lament from the farmer’s wife that she should not be able to wear her bonnet: it was too small, would not come on, and she had no one, they were so busy, to send in with it to Miss Dee’s to get it altered. I offered to bring it in for her, and to take it back in the morning—lI was going to the wedding, you know. So she had the band-box, it was but a small one, put in my gig, with the bonnet and a note in it, and I brought it in to Miss Dee, undertaking to send for it again in the evening. Before evening came, I was called out to a patient, from whom I did not get away till close on eleven o’clock. I was nearly at home when I remembered Mrs. Thorpe’s bonnet. It was too late to send a servant for it, and on the spur of the moment I turned back for it myself, knowing I should be off betimes in the morning. Deuce take that Miss Jemima, with her miserable notions !” emphatically spoke the Doctor, breaking off to say it. ‘‘Never mind Miss Jemima; go on.” ‘“There’s not much more. I looked up at the window: had it been dark I should have concluded they were gone to bed, and taken the chance of the morning; but there was a light in it, so I rang. The little servant, Milly, opened the door ——” ‘“T thought Milly did not sleep there,” interrupted Mr. Sims. ‘¢ She did, I believe, while Martha White was absent. Any way, she was there that night. Miss Dee followed her downstairs and eave me the band-box, which was all ready for me, and I carried it home. I was not there two minutes. And that’s the whole truth, Sims, on my sacred word.” The clergyman went out with a downcast face, musing on the iniquity of the human heart in woman; its proneness to believe evil instead of good, its propensity to traduce rather than to excuse. He called upon Miss Eliza and Miss Jane Down, and gave them, in his mild way, a little of his mind; and from them he went to Miss Jemima Raddle. “Td put the backbiting old maids in the pillory, give me my way,” pronounced Captain Curlew the next day, when Rillbrook was being convicted of its slander. ‘“‘ Hang me if I’d not!” But it was too late to save Winnifred Dee. A very short while, and the angels came down, to bear her in their arms from this cruel world to one where slander and sorrow entereth not. ‘‘She was delicately and nervously constituted, and she inherited consumption from both father and mother,” observed Mr. Probert to a knot of questioning ladies. ‘And the worry that fell upon her from the whispering of false tongues, the sleepless nights, the hours of weeping, must have prepared her for bodily illness, so that when it seized upon her frame she could not make head against it. I’d not stop at Rillbrook for the world.” ECOPMIC LOO KS, (E00)