She shrunk from the dreary plainness of truth, and longed for flattery and petting and caresses once more; and she wrote to John an overflowingly tender letter, full of longings, which brought him at once to her side, the most delighted of men.

When Lillie cried in his arms, and told him that she found New York perfectly hateful; when she declaimed on the heartlessness of fashionable life, and longed to go with him to their quiet home,--she was tolerably in earnest; and John was perfectly enchanted.
Poor John! Was he a muff, a spoon?
We think not.

We understand well that there is not a _woman_ among our readers who has the slightest patience with Lillie, and that the most of them are half out of patience with John for his enduring tenderness towards her.
But men were born and organized by nature to be the protectors of women; and, generally speaking, the stronger and more thoroughly manly a man is, the more he has of what phrenologists call the "pet organ,"-- the disposition which makes him the charmed servant of what is weak and dependent.

John had a great share of this quality.

He was made to be a protector.