old Simonds, and KNOW that he has left his daughter seventy-eight
thousand dollars; and, after all, this pocket-handkerchief may be only a
sign. I always distrust people who throw out such lures."

"Oh, rely on it, there is no sham here; Charley Pray told me of this girl
last week, when no one had ever heard of her pocket-handkerchief."

"Why don't Charley, then, take her himself? I'm sure, if I had HIS
imperial, I could pick and choose among all the second-class heiresses
in town."

{imperial = wealth (from a Russian gold coin)}

"Ay, there's the rub, Tom; one is obliged in our business to put up with
the SECOND class. Why can't we aim higher at once, and get such
girls as the Burtons, for instance?"

"The Burtons have, or have had, a mother."

"And haven't all girls mothers? Who ever heard of a man or a woman
without a mother!"

"True, physically; but I mean morally. Now this very Eudosia Halfacre
has no more mother, in the last sense, than you have a wet-nurse. She
has an old woman to help her make a fool of herself; but, in the way of
a mother, she would be better off with a pair of good gum-shoes. A
creature that is just to tell a girl not to wet her feet, and when to cloak
and uncloak, and to help tear the check-book out of money, is no more
of a mother than old Simonds was of a Solomon, when he made that
will which every one of us knows by heart quite as well as he knows the