At
the end of the fourth summer she appeared on close scrutiny to be a
little worn, and her innocent air seemed a trifle deliberate. She
returned to her home in New Jersey in not quite her usual spirits. In
fact she became pensive. She had seen the world, and lo! she found it
stuffed with sawdust. She was ready to settle down, but the only man
with whom she would have been willing to settle had never asked her. He
was the brother of one of the girls who had been forbidden by her mother
to stay out in canoes with young men after nine at night. The rumor had
reached Flossy that this same mother had referred to her in "the fish
pond" at Rodick's as "that dreadful girl." It would have pleased her
after that to have wrung an offer of marriage from the son and heir, who
knew her cousins, the Morton Prices, and to whom she would have been
willing to engage herself temporarily at all events. He was very
devoted; they stayed out in his canoe until past midnight; he wrote
verses to her and told her his innermost thoughts; but he stopped there.
He went away without committing himself, and she was left to chew the
cud of reflection. It was bitter, not because she was in love with him,
for she was not. In her heart she knew he bored her a little.
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