of not much better taste
or breeding, and thus the unusual attention the youthful poet was
receiving explained itself. Myrtle no sooner saw the little accident of
which her rural friend was the victim than she left her place in the
dance with a simple courage which did her credit.

"I want to speak to you a minute," she said. "Come into this alcove."

And the courageous young lady not only told Gifted what had happened to
him, but found a pin somehow, as women always do on a pinch, and had him
in presentable condition again almost before the bewildered young man
knew what was the matter. On reflection it occurred to him, as it has to
other provincial young persons going to great cities, that he might
perhaps have been hasty in thinking himself an object of general
curiosity as yet. There had hardly been time for his name to have become
very widely known. Still, the feeling had been pleasant for the moment,
and had given him an idea of what the rapture would be, when, wherever he
went, the monster digit (to hint a classical phrase) of the collective
admiring public would be lifted to point him out, and the whisper would
pass from one to another, "That's him! That's Hopkins!"

Mr. Murray Bradshaw had been watching the opportunity for carrying out
his intentions, with his pleasant smile covering up all that was passing
in his mind, and Master Byles Gridley, looking equally unconcerned, had
been watching him. The young man's time came at last. Some were at the
supper-table, some were promenading, some were talking, when he managed
to get Myrtle a little apart from the rest, and led her towards one of
the recesses in the apartment, where two chairs were invitingly placed.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling,--the influences to
which he had trusted had not been thrown away upon her. He had no idea
of letting his purpose be seen until he was fully ready. It required all
his self-mastery to avoid betraying himself by look or tone, but he was
so natural that Myrtle was thrown wholly off her guard. He meant to make
her pleased with herself at the outset, and that not by point-blank
flattery, of which she had had more than enough of late, but rather by
suggestion and inference, so that she should find herself feeling happy
without knowing how. It would be easy to glide from that to the
impression she had produced upon him, and get the two feelings more or
less mingled in her mind. And so the simple confe