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, a respectable, well looking lad, entered Mr. Daly's thread and needle store at the age of fourteen. He was a faultless and enduring creature, always at his post, and serving out his appointed time—seven years—without giving his master the least cause of complaint. The morning of his birthday was his day of freedom, and although Mr. Daly knew that this day must come some time or other, yet he was quite unprepared for it. Great, therefore, would have been his sorrow, if Martin Barton had not, in announcing that his apprenticeship was expired, asked his consent to marry Miss Letty Daly—his only child.

Now Mr. Daly had not the least suspicion that Martin Barton had a fancy for his daughter, for he had always considered him as a young man that had no fancy for any thing outside the counter. Even Mrs. Daly, as sharp-eyed as one of her needles, heard the news pretty much as he had done—sorrow that Martin Barton's time was up, and surprise that he wanted to marry their daughter.

"Martin Barton in love with our Letty!—it cannot be, Mr. Daly, for to my knowledge he has never spent an evening with her in his life."