"Uncle Sam will, I daresay," said Miss Crutty, "dear mamma's brother."
"And who _was_ your dear mamma?" said I, for Miss Crutty's respected parent had been long since dead, and I never heard her name mentioned in the family.
Magdalen blushed, and cast down her eyes to the ground. "Mamma was a foreigner," at last she said.
"A German; papa married her when she was very young:—she was not of a very good family," said Miss Crutty, hesitating.
"And what care I for family, my love," said I, tenderly kissing the knuckles of the hand which I held; "she must have been an angel who gave birth to you."
_A German shoemaker!_ hang 'em, thought I, I have had enough of them, and so I broke up this conversation, which did not somehow please me....
Well, the day was drawing near: the clothes were ordered; the banns were read. My dear mamma had built a cake about the size of a washing-tub: and I was only waiting for a week to pass to put me in possession of twelve thousand pounds in the _five_ per cents., as they were in those days, Heaven bless em! Little did I know the storm that was brewing, and the disappointment which was to fall upon a young man who really did his best to get a fortune.
"O Robert!" said my Magdalen to me, two days before the match was to come off, "I have _such_ a kind letter from uncle Sam, in London. I wrote to him as you wished. He says that he is coming down to-morrow; that he has heard of you often, and knows your character very well, and that he has got a _very handsome present_ for us! What can it be, I wonder?"
"He is a bachelor with a fine trade, and nobody to leave his money to."
"His present can't be less than a thousand pounds," says I.
"Or, perhaps, a silver tea-set, and some corner dishes," says she.
But we could not agree to this: it was too little—too mean for a man of her uncle's wealth; and we both determined it must be the thousand pounds.
"Dear, good uncle! he's to be here by the coach," says Magdalen. "Let us ask a little party to meet him." And so we did, and so they came. My father and mother, old Crutty in his best wig, and the parson who was to marry us next day. The coach was to come in at six. And there was the tea-table, and there was the punch-bowl, and everybody ready and smiling to receive our dear uncle from London.