I am, etc.=
Under this was provided "A Favorable Answer," in which Sam Murdock might
have said that he had long perceived this thing and applauded it, and
would the young man "dine with us to-morrow at six if you are not
engaged, and you will then have an opportunity to plead your own cause."
But chillingly after this graceful assent followed an "Unfavorable
Answer," which Sam Murdock would also see when he opened the book at
page 251; and still more portentously on the same page was a letter
which Miss Selina Murdock herself might choose to write him, a sickening
and dreadful thing entitled, "Unfavorable Reply on the Ground of
Poverty."
"To say that I do not feel pleased and flattered at your proposal would
be to tell a useless untruth," the thing began speciously. "But how are
we situated, what hope of happiness with our unsettled prospects and
worse than small means? Industry has doubtless never been and never will
be wanting on your part, but--" and so to its dreadful end. It was
almost base in its coldness and mercenary calculation. That phrase about
the "useless untruth" implied even a dubious and considering morality;
and the conclusion, "we must not entail misery upon others as well as
ourselves by a too hasty step," argued a nature cautious in the extreme.
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