“So the harvest party was a grand success. But there come down from New York a stranger, Count Sebastian Gomez, who was introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Clergy as an Eyetalian nobleman with a lot of castles and such truck over in Europe and more money than he wanted. He was a fine-lookin’ fellow, tall and straight as an arrow, and he had a curled-up mustache and big, bold eyes that looked you clean through. He was dressed way up in G, and could talk a lot of these here foreign languages, and he wanted to kiss all the ladies’ hands and everybody thought he was the finest sort of fellow they could ever wish to see....
“But Hopeful Whittier didn’t like him, and she says, when she saw how he was makin’ up to Miss Abby, flatterin’ her and kissin’ her hand and writin’ his name down for all the dances and starin’ angry-like at any other fellow who tried to look at her—she thought then that Miss Abby was makin’ a mistake. But if this count hadn’t eyes for any one but Miss Abby, Miss Abby didn’t have eyes for any one but the count. And Hopeful told me that, when she undressed Miss Abby that night, Miss Abby says to her, ‘Hopeful, I am a happy girl—I’m so happy I don’t know how to understand it—I’ve seen some one I could love better than my own dear father and mother.’ Hopeful tried to warn her, she didn’t know why, but Miss Abby wouldn’t listen, and she sat up half the night, Hopeful says, thinkin’ about him.
“The next day the guests went drivin’, and the count managed to set beside Miss Abby when they rode and at the basket picnic and never to let her out of his sight. Abby’s Pa and Ma seemed pleased about it, and they told their friends Count Gomez was of royal blood and he had letters provin’ he was all he said he was. Well, that didn’t win over Hopeful Whittier nor Ali Baba, but they didn’t matter, of course. So Hopeful went back to New York with the family, and Ali Baba closed up the place. In the middle of the winter I got a letter from Hopeful sayin’ that the count and Miss Abby were engaged, and all New York was talkin’ about the foreign alliance, and how grand it was to marry a nobleman and be a real Eyetalian countess. She said Miss Abby was so happy she just floated about and that she was having trunks and trunks of dresses made because he was goin’ to take her to his palace over in Italy and she wanted his family to think well of her. I didn’t like the sound of it, neither, but I didn’t think no more about it until in the spring, the last of Easter week, a coach and two bay hosses just came tearin’ into the Corners at dusk and put up at the Button livery.