Yet such
was the sober habit of the place and time.
So there was no troth plighted between Allen and Susie, though the youth
loved the maiden with all the energy of his fresh, unused nature, and she
knew it very well. He never dreamed of marrying any other woman than Susie
Barringer, and she sometimes tried a new pen by writing and carefully
erasing the initials S.M.G., which, as she was christened Susan Minerva,
may be taken as showing the direction of her thoughts.
If Allen Golyer had been less bashful or more enterprising, this history
would never have been written; for Susie would probably have said Yes for
want of anything better to say, and when she went to visit her aunt
Abigail in Jacksonville she would have gone _engaged_, her finger bound
with gold and her maiden meditations fettered by promises. But she went,
as it was, fancy free, and there is no tinder so inflammable as the
imagination of a pretty country girl of sixteen.
One day she went out with her easy-going aunt Abigail to buy ribbons, the
Chancy Creek invoices not supplying the requirements of Jacksonville
society. As they traversed the court-house square on their way to Deacon
Pettybones' place, Miss Susie's vagrant glances rested on an iris of
ribbons displayed in an opposition window.
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