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"Oh, thanks," I said and stuffed the charming epistle into the kitchen stove.

My real difficulty however lay with Madge herself. The poor deluded girl had been brought up to believe that she was irresistibly charming. There hadn't been a prettier girl than she in Glennings Falls. She could boast of more "best young men," as she called them, than any girl I ever knew. Four young aspirants, before Oliver had appeared, had proposed to her, and she was only nineteen. Her father, a man of enough education to be a minister, had died of consumption, when Madge was a baby. Since then, she and her mother had managed to make a living by boarding some of the foremen and superintendents at the quarries. They had always had the distinction of entertaining the owner of the granite works whenever he came to Glennings Falls for a yearly inspection. It was he who had procured a position for Madge "to wait on table" summertimes at one of the big mountain hotels. There she had picked up a great many ideas on style and fashion, and copied them now in cheap exaggerated imitation.

The first evening after her trunk arrived at our house, she appeared decked out in a fearful display of lace and flashy finery, redolent with cologne, and manners that matched her clothes. She talked incessantly. Her lace and perfumery seemed to give her confidence. She discoursed volubly on New York, and aired her newly-acquired knowledge of hotel life