Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/115

 THE WIDOW'S MISTAKE.

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��THE WIDOW'S MISTAKE.

��BY HELEN M. RUSSELL.

��The widow Montgomery's snug little house was looking its best. The " Fall cleaning "' was all completed, and from the kitchen to the attic everything was as neat as two energetic hands could make it — while the widow herself, dressed in a neat home suit of brown al- paca, stood watching, from the sitting- room window, the dead leaves which were blown about by the chill November wind. She was a happy looking little woman, with jet black hair and eyes, and an unmistakable air of gentility about her. The time had been when she was the petted daughter of wealthy parents, but the wealth had " taken wings," — the fond parents had died, and she had mar- ried Alvin Montgomery, a plain carpen- ter, for the sake of a homeland because she knew he loved her. In short, she " married in haste to repent at leisure." The young husband had built the cottage and taken his bride home soon after their marriage, and Hattie Montgomery had tried hard to be content ; but she found this life very different from what had once been hers, and when death stepped into the home circle and took from thence her husband, she could not mourn with any deep and lasting grief. It is true she missed him, and really mourned for him, because she thought it her duty so to do, and because he had always been kind to her, but when she laid aside her robes at the end of a year, people said she laid aside her regrets likewise. Whether she did or not is nothing to me — I have only to tell her story in the fewest words possible. r Just across the way from the widow's cottage stood a large white house, with long piazzas and deep bay windows, which quite threw into the shade the little cottage in ques- tion, but Mrs. Montgomery cared little for this. To be sure, she worked hard, and the sewing machine was seldom al-

��lowed to remain idle long at a time, but she somehow managed to find time to read her favorite books and practice her favorite selections upon the piano, which was the only memento she possessed of olden days. She also found time to build castles in the air, which, like all castles of a similar nature, tumbled to pieces as soon as they were built.

There was on»thing which Mrs. Mont- gomery particularly disliked, and that was matchmaking. "' In ten cases out of a hundred such marriages proved unhap- py," she often declared, and as her own marriage was reckoned in with the hun- dred, she evidently knew whereof she spoke. It is a pity that people cannot find pleasure of a less questionable char, acter. There are unhappy marriages enough which people enter into of their own free will, without those which are, in one sense of the word, directly brought about by interested parties, who, when they discover the evil they have wrought, lift their hands in surprise and exclaim : " Well, I am sure I am not to blame. I told him [or herj to consider everything, and then do as he [or she] thought best, and if they really decided to marry, never to blame me if the mar- riage proved otherwise than happy." Of course they are not to blame — no one would think of blaming them ; and they can go on their way with a elear con- science, and perhaps do the same thing over again, and, quite as likely as not, with the same result. In spite of her horror of matchmaking, however, Mrs. Montgomery had a scheme in her little head that she thought a very wise one. In the great house across the way, pre- viously mentioned, lived Lester Pierce. He was a bachelor somewhere in the for- ties, wealthy, handsome and honorable, a noble specimen of what a man should be. For over ten years he had lived

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