THERE IS NO HURRY. 175

was not prepared to come with her family be-
fore the world as paupers. ‘* We have no claim
upon the public,” she said at last. ‘Iam sure

ou mean us kindly, but we have no claim.

fy dear father forwarded no public work—no
public object; he gave his advice, and received
his payment. If we are not provided for, it is
no public fault. Besides, my father’s children
are able and willing to support themselves. I
am sure you mean us kindly, but we have no
claim upon public sympathy, and an appeal to
it would crush us to the earth. I am very glad
you did not speak first to my mother. My
uncle Charles would not suffer it, even suppose
she wished it.” ;

This friend also departed to excite new spec-
ulations as to the pride and poverty of “ poor
dear Dr. Adams’s family.” In the world, how-
ever—the busy busy London world—it is idle to
expect any thing to create even a nine days’
wonder. When the house and furniture were
at last offered for sale, the feeling was some-
what revived; and Mary, whose beauty, exqui-
site as it was, had so unobtrusive a character as
never to have created a foe, was remembered
with tears by many: even the father of her old
lover, when he was congratulated by one more
worldly-minded than himself on the escape of
his son in not marrying a portionless girl, re-
proved the unfeeling speaker with a wish that
he only hoped his son might have as good a
wife as Mary Adams would have been.