CHAPTER XII
Will our little Mary really fall in love with the Doctor?—The question reaches us in anxious tones from all the circle of our readers; and what especially shocks us is, that grave doctors of divinity, and serious, stocking-knitting matrons, seem to be the class who are particularly set against the success of our excellent orthodox hero, and bent on reminding us of the claims of that unregenerate James, whom we have sent to sea on purpose that our heroine may recover herself of that foolish partiality for him which all the Christian world seems bent on perpetuating.
‘ Now, really,’ says the Rev. Mrs. Q., looking up from her bundle of Sewing-Society work, ‘you are not going to let Mary marry the Doctor?’
My dear Madam, is not that just what you did, yourself, after h
