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  that beautiful place in Germantown with house, stable, horses, and gardens all ready for him.”

“And the girl, too; don’t forget her,” I responded. “Though some men don’t care for these ready-to-wear wives; they prefer to look about and to choose.”

“He would have to look a long distance before he found any one to compare with Miss Darling, either in beauty or suitableness,” said Cousin Sarah, thereby injecting the first drop of poison in my blood and starting me on the downward path toward nervous prostration.

“Miss Darling is a man’s woman,” she continued, unconsciously giving me another push; “the type with which neither you nor I have anything in common, but which we know to be irresistible.”

Now Cousin Sarah is fifty-five, thin, angular, erect, uncompromising. I love and respect her, but do not care to be lumped with her in affairs of the heart, at least not for thirty years to come; and although I think it