lightly of the gentlemen to whom they are not engaged), that Penny never
dared mention him, and trembled and blushed whenever they met him,
thinking of the valentine, which was very strong in its expressions, and
which she felt guilty of knowing by heart. A man who had been to the
Indies, and knew the sea so well, seemed to her a sort of public
character, almost like Robinson Crusoe or Captain Cook; and Penny had
always wished her husband to be a remarkable personage, likely to be put
in Mangnall's Questions, with which register of the immortals she had
become acquainted during her one year at a boarding-school. Only it
seemed strange that a remarkable man should be a confectioner and pastry-
cook, and this anomaly quite disturbed Penny's dreams. Her brothers, she
knew, laughed at men who couldn't sit on horseback well, and called them
tailors; but her brothers were very rough, and were quite without that
power of anecdote which made Mr. Freely such a delightful companion. He
was a very good man, she thought, for she had heard him say at Mr.
Luff's, one day, that he always wished to do his duty in whatever state
of life he might be placed; and he knew a great deal of poetry, for one
day he had repeated a verse of a song. She wondered if he had made the
words of the valentine!--it ended in this way:--

"Without thee, it is pain to live,
But with thee, it were sweet to die."

Poor Mr. Freely! her father would very likely object--she felt sure he
would, for he always called Mr. Freely "that sugar-plum fellow." Oh, it
was very cruel, when true love was crossed in that way, and all because
Mr. Freely was a confectioner: well, Penny would be true to him, for all
that, and since his being a confectioner gave her an opportunity of
showing her faithfulness, she was glad of it. Edward Freely was a pretty
name, much better than John Towers. Young Towers had offered her a rose