ed occasionally to me,
aside. "Oh, yes, ain't it beautiful?"

Once, she remarked in greater confidence; "Oh, he's dreadful wild!"

"Lovell?" I inquired, with impulsive incredulity.

"Oh, dreadful!" she continued. "I don't know what he'd ben if we hadn't
always restrained him. But somehow, I think there's something dreadful
bewitchin' about such folks. Don't yew?"

"Very," I answered with vague, though ardent sympathy.

"Oh, dreadful!" she responded.

Meanwhile the perspiration stood out on Lovell's grave countenance, and
his head, like a laborious sledge-hammer, was swaying mechanically
backward and forward.

"Sing bass, now, Lovell," said Mrs. Barlow; and the expression of awed
delight and expectancy on her face, as she uttered these words, was a
rebuke to all cynics and unbelievers of any sort whatever.

"Yes'm, so I will, certainly," said Lovell; "so I will, and if I hadn't
got such a cold, I'd come down heavy on it too."

"What do you think?" Mrs. Barlow went on in the same confidential aside
to me; "he's took it into his head that he wants to get married! Oh, yes,
he has really! and I think it's a wonder he never got set on it before.
But he never has so but what we could restrain him. But William and I,
we're beginning to think he might as well if he wants to. Oh, yes, I
think it will be so nice. Don't yew? I think it will be just splendid!
And I tell William, Lovell's wife shan't do nothing but set in the parlor
and fold her hands, if she don't want to; and she shall have a music, and
everything. When we built our new house, you know we used to live in that
little house that Brother Mark Barlow lives in now, oh, yes, and I think
it's so nice to have a new house, don't yew? I had 'em make the window
seats low on purpose, so that Lovell's children could sit on them! Oh, I
think it will be so pleasant, don't yew?"

Mrs. Barlow turned her enraptured gaze on me.

"Lovell's wife," I hastened to reply, toying with my glasses; "whoever
she may be, is certainly to be envied--and Lovell's children, too"--I
added, induced by that transcendently beaming smile; "who will have such
a broad window seat to sit on."

Never an evening began in heartier fashion at the Ark.

George Olver, standing next to Rebecca, rolled out a grand and powerful
bass.

Lars Thorjon, the Norwegian, maintained a smiling silence, except when he
was giving utterance in song to his inspiring tenor.

Madeline played the "music."

I saw