erstand Ariel always--that was clear--but they would like
each other.

"I am wearing my hat," answered Ariel, "because at any moment I may
decide to go for a long walk!"

"Oh, I hope not," said Mamie. "There are sure to be people: a few
still come, even though I'm an engaged girl. I expect that's just to
console me, though," she added, smiling over this worn quip of the
betrothed, and shaking her head at Eugene, who grew red and coughed.
"There'll be plenty to-day, but they won't be here to see me. It's
you, Ariel, and they'd be terribly disappointed if you weren't here. I
shouldn't wonder if the whole town came; it's curious enough about you!"

Canaan (at least that part of it which Mamie meant when she said "the
whole town") already offered testimony to her truthfulness. Two
gentlemen, aged nine and eleven, and clad in white "sailor suits," were
at that moment grooving their cheeks between the round pickets of the
gate. They had come from the house across the street, evidently
stimulated by the conversation at their own recent dinner-table (they
wore a few deposits such as are left by chocolate-cake), and the motive
of their conduct became obvious when, upon being joined by a person
from next door (a starched and frilled person of the opposite sex but
sympathetic age), one of them waggled a forefinger through the gate at
Ariel, and a voice was heard in explanation:

"THAT'S HER."

There was a rustle in the lilac-bushes near the cedar-tree; the three
small heads turned simultaneously in that direction; something terrific
was evidently seen, and with a horrified "OOOH!" the trio skedaddled
headlong.

They were but the gay vanguard of the life which the street, quite dead
through the Sunday dinner-hour, presently took on. Young couples with
their progeny began to appear, returning from the weekly reunion Sunday
dinner with relatives; young people meditative (until they reached the
Pike Mansion), the wives fanning themselves or shooing the
tots-able-to-walk ahead of them, while the husbands, wearing long
coats, satin ties, and showing dust upon their blazing shoes,
invariably pushed the perambulators. Most of these passers-by
exchanged greetings with Mamie and Eugene, and all of them looked hard
at Ariel as long as it was possible.

And now the young men of the town, laboriously arranged as to apparel,
began to appear on the street in small squads, making their Sunday
rounds; the youngest working in phalan