hree other Penney sisters all tried their best to be
agreeable, Marie donning a clinging blue gown and walking up and down the
piazza watering plants at this unusual hour of the day for his particular
benefit, a performance which caused L. Middleton to ask, "Say, did you
ever do a vaudeville turn?" And Marie, not knowing whether to take the
remark as a criticism or a compliment, preferred to take the latter view
and answer in languid tones,--

"No, but I have acted, and I've been seriously advised to go on
the stage."

In the middle of the afternoon, the load of groceries having arrived
safely, Fannie's "hero" took his leave, Papa Penney driving him to the
village inn, where he was to unpack his samples.

For a while L. Middleton was a standard topic of conversation among the
girls. They wondered for what L. stood. Fannie guessed Louis, Marie
spitefully suggested that it might be Lucifer, and that was why he didn't
spell it out. Then as he seemed about fading from the horizon, he
reappeared suddenly one crisp October morning, just starting on his
eastern fall route, he said, and invited Fanny to go to the County Fair.

Again a period of silence followed. The sisters remarked that most
travelling men were swindlers, etc., but Fannie persistently put violet
water on the handkerchief that she tucked under her pillow every night,
until, as winter set in, the supply failed.

Then an idea came to her, she took the horseshoe from where it had been
hanging over her door, covered its dinginess with two coats of gold
paint, cut the legend, "Sweet Violets," together with the embossed
flowers, from the label on the perfume bottle, and pasted them on the
horseshoe, which she further ornamented with an enormous ribbon bow, and
despatched it secretly to L. Middleton by express a few days before
Christmas.

At New Year's a box arrived for Fannie. It contained a gold pin in the
shape of a horseshoe, in addition to a large, heart-shaped candy box
filled with such chocolates that each was as a foretaste of celestial
bliss to Fannie, who now thought she might fairly assume airs of
importance.

Half a dozen letters went rapidly back and forth, and then the proposal
bounded along as unexpectedly as every other detail of the courtship.
There was very little sentiment of expression about it, but he was in
earnest and gave references as to his respectability, etc., much as if he
were applying for a business position, and ended by asking