ngland, where the
bride would spend a portion of the honeymoon in the higher studies there
open to women, while Mrs. Cristie and Mr. Lodloe were passing happy days
in the metropolis preparing for their marriage early in the new year.
The Beams were in Florida, where, so Lanigan wrote, they had an idea of
buying an orange grove, and where, so Calthea wrote, she would not live
if they gave her a whole county.

The familiar faces all being absent, and very few people dropping in
from Lethbury or the surrounding neighborhood, the Squirrel Inn was
lonely, and the hostess thereof did not hesitate to say so. As for the
host, he had his books, his plans, and his hopes. He also had his
regrets, which were useful in helping him to pass his time.

"What in the world," asked Mrs. Petter, regarding an object in her
husband's hands, "made you take down that miserable, dilapidated little
squirrel from the sign-post? You might as well have let him stay there
all winter, and put up a new one in the spring."

"This has been a most memorable year," replied her husband, "and I wish
to place this squirrel in his proper position on the calendar shelf of
the tap-room before the storms and winds of winter have blown the fur
from his body and every hair from his upturned tail. I have killed and
prepared a fresh squirrel, and I will place him on the sign-post in a
few days."

"If you would let that one stay until he was a skin skeleton, he would
have given people a better idea of the way this year has turned out than
he does now," said Mrs. Petter.

"How so?" he asked, looking at her in surprise.

"Don't we sit here stripped of every friendly voice?" she said. "Of
course, it's always more lonesome in the winter, but it's never been so
bad as this, for we haven't even Calthea to fall back on. Things didn't
turn out as I expected them to, and I suppose they never will, but it
always was my opinion, and is yet, that nothing can go straight in such
a crooked house. This very afternoon, as I was coming from the
poultry-yard, and saw Lanigan's ladder still standing up against the
window of his room, I couldn't help thinking that if a burglar got into
that room, he might suppose he was in the house; but he'd soon find
himself greatly mistaken, and even if he went over the roof to Mr.
Lodloe's room, all he could do would be to come down the tower stairs,
and then he would find himself outside, just where he started from."

"That would suit me ve