is all in the lot. Didn't you
find your ride very warm?"

"Not very; and if it had been, the pleasure of seeing you, Mrs.
Perkins, would more than compensate for any annoyance from the heat."

"You are so polite, Judge," replied Mrs. Perkins, simpering. "I
declare you are equal to a Frenchman."

With all his French education, this was a remark the Judge would have
been willing to dispense with; however on the French principle of
considering that as a compliment, the meaning of which is equivocal,
he bowed and introduced Mr. Armstrong.

Mrs. Perkins courtesied. "She'd heard," she said, "of Mr. Armstrong,
and that he had the handsomest daughter, in the town of Hillsdale."

"It is your turn now," whispered the Judge. "Let me see how you will
acquit yourself."

But Armstrong was not a man for compliments.

"Faith looks as well as young ladies generally I believe," he said.

Mrs. Perkins did not like to have her pretty speech received with so
much indifference, so she answered,

"I was, perhaps, too much in a hurry when I called Squire Armstrong's
daughter, the handsomest: I forgot Anne, and she's a right to be,
sence she's got her father's good looks."

"Dear Mrs Perkins, you overwhelm me!" exclaimed the Judge, bowing
still lower than before. "I think higher than ever of your taste."

"Ah! You're poking fun at me, me now," said Mrs. Perkins, hardly
knowing how to receive the acknowledgment. "But wouldn't you like to
take something after your ride?"

Those were not the days of temperance societies, and it would have
been quite _secundum regulas_, had the gentlemen accepted the offer
as intended by their hostess. The Judge looked at Armstrong, who
declined, and then turning to Mrs. Perkins said,

"The strawberry season is not over, I believe"--

"Oh! I can give you strawberries and cream," interrupted the
hospitable Mrs. Perkins.

"And would you be so kind as to give them to us in the veranda? The
sun does not shine in, and it will be pleasanter in the open air."

"Sartainly. Eliza Jane!" she cried, elevating her voice and speaking
through an open door to one of her little daughters, with a blooming
multitude of whom Providence had blessed her,

"Eliza Jane, fetch two cheers into the piazza. That piazza, Judge, is
one of the grandest things that ever was. The old man and me and the
children, take ever so much comfort in it."

"I am glad you like it. But we will spare your daughter the trouble of
taking