With whom, though, could she take refuge? If she went to MAGNOLIA
PENDRAGON, all her dearest schoolmates would say, that they had always
loved her, despite her great faults, yet could not disguise from
themselves that she seemed at last to be fairly running after Miss
PENDRAGON'S brother. Besides, Mr. BUMSTEAD, offended by the seeming want
of confidence in him evinced by her flight, would, probably, take
measures publicly to identify MAGNOLIA'S alpaca garment with the
covering of his lost umbrella, and thus direct new suspicion against a
sister and brother already bothered almost into hysterics.
During the last few weeks, an attack of dyspepsia had laid the
foundation of a mind in the Flowerpot, as it generally does in other
young female American boarding-school thinkers, and she was now capable
of that subtle line of reasoning which is the great commendation of her
sex to a recognized perfect intellectual equality with man. Once
decided, by her apprehension of a General European War, against marriage
with J. BUMSTEAD, she took a rather irritable view of that too
attractive devotional musician, and inferred, from his not being wealthy
enough to stand the test of possible transatlantic hostilities, that he
must, himself, have killed EDWIN DROOD.
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