leasant little journeys into the hills and the
cherry-pickings.

"And dangling, dangling. I've been hanging in mid-air for nearly a year
now. When are you going to put me out of my misery?" His tone was
chiding and moody.

"But am I to be blamed if, after having refused twice to marry you, you
still persist?" Kitty assumed a judicial air.

"All you have to do," sadly, "is to tell me to clear out."

"That's just it," cried Kitty wrathfully. "If I tell you to go it will
be for good; and I don't want you to go that way. I like you; you are
cheerful and amusing, and I find pleasure in your company. But every day
in the year, breakfast and dinner!" She appealed to the god in the
fountain. What unreasonable beings men were!

"But you haven't refused me this time."

"Because I wish to make it as easy as possible for you." Which of the
two meanings she offered him was lost upon Merrihew; he saw but one, nor
the covert glance, roguish and mischievous withal. "Come, let us be
sensible for ten minutes."

Merrihew laid his watch on the bench beside him. Kitty dimpled.

"Don't you love it in Florence?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," scraping the gravel with his crop. "Hillard says I'm
finishing my bally education at a canter. I can tell a saint from a
gentleman in a night-gown, a halo from a barrel-hoop, and I can drink
Chianti without making a face."

Kitty laughed rollickingly. For beneath her furbelows and ribbons and
trinkets she was inordinately happy and light of heart. Her letter had
come; she was only waiting for the day of sailing; and she was to take
back with her the memory of the rarest adventure which ever befell a
person, always excepting those of the peripatetic sailor from Bagdad.

"I want to go home," said Merrihew, when her laughter died away in a
soft mutter.

"What! leave this beautiful world for the sordid one yonder?"

"Sordid it may be, but it's home. I can speak to and understand every
man I meet on the streets there; there are the theaters and the club and
the hunting and fishing and all that. Here it's nothing but pictures and
concierges and lying cabbies. If I could collect all my friends and
plant 'em over here, why, I could stand it. But I'm lonesome. Did you
ever try to spread frozen butter on hot biscuits? Well, that's the way I
feel."

This metaphor brought tears of merriment to Kitty's eyes. She would have
laughed at anything this day.

"Daniel, you are hopeless."

"I admit it."

"How