To provide partners for so many gentlemen
the cradle was almost robbed, and many a farmer's daughter of Shayite
proclivities found herself, not unwillingly, conscripted to supply the
dearth of gentlemen's daughters, and provided with an opportunity for
contrasting the merits of silk-stockinged and worsted-stockinged
adorers, an experience possibly not redounding to their after
contentment in the station to which Providence had called them.
But even with these conscripts there was still such an excess of beaux
that every girl had half a dozen. As for Desire Edwards, she had the
whole army. If I have hitherto spoken of her in a manner as if she
were the only "young lady" in Stockbridge, that is no more than the
impression which she gave. Although there were several families in the
village which had a claim to equal gentility, their daughters somehow
felt that they failed to make good that claim in Desire's presence.
They owned, though they found less flattering terms in which to
express it, the same air of distinction and dainty aloofness about
her, which the farmers' daughters, too humble for jealousy, so
admiringly admitted. The young militia officers and gentlemen privates
found her adorable, and the three or four young men whom Squire
Edwards took into his house, as his share in quartering the troops,
were the objects of the most rancorous envy of the entire army.
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