Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXIV. A SHOWER OF RICE. The reconciliation between Maggie and Bertha Fay was effected as completely as such reconciliations are apt to be. The two came together, inspired by the single desire to take up their former friendship at the point where it had ended two years before; but this proved not easy, though Bertha suffered less disappointment than Maggie. Her easy temperament contentedly accepted the good she had, without those subtle questionings and doubts Maggie had learned to indulge in. She rejoiced in the new possession of her friend, whom she found the same bright, frank, loving Maggie as of old. Maggie, however, was conscious of a vague disappointment, though displeased with herself for recognizing it. It was not that Bertha had changed so much, as that she seemed to have stood still. She had once been the more womanly of the two, Maggie remembered; better behaved, and with a more careful judgment, --which Maggie often acted on in place of her own, making Bertha, as she had said, her "walking conscience." She was womanly still, and her manners were all right, of course; but a certain childlike quality inhered in all her words and actions, which her critics might perhaps have attributed to dulness or to a slight moral inertia. Bertha had grown quite stout, and the task of carrying about so much unnecessary flesh perhaps hindered the free operation of mental instincts. She had inherited this physical feature from her father, who had early shown a slight tendency to corpulence; but as he never showed anything but a tendency anywhere, it stopped here in an incipient stage. Maggie's disappointment in her old friend began with the knowledge of Bertha's engagement to Judge Foster. She could not understand it, nor Bertha's way of...
