t doesn't seem to take
long--sometimes. And the wind is in the east."

Now, when a bride-elect begins to deal in double meanings of this sort
with her fiance, the course of true love is likely to be entering on a
piece of rough road-bed.

"How did you find Estelle when you called?"

Estelle? Estelle? Estelle! Nothing in Blodgett and Blatherwick's
notes about Estelle. "A whole directory of names," as Judge Blodgett
had said, but no Estelle. The world full of useless people--a billion
and a half of them--and not an Estelle at poor Amidon's call in this
time of need. Hence this long hiatus in the conversation.

"Really, Miss--er--a--my dear, I haven't had time to call on any one."

"It will be a little hard to explain," said she after a silence, "to my
prospective bridesmaid and dearest friend, that you were so long in New
York and could not call. It is not quite like you, Eugene."

He was sitting where he could see her well, and because she looked into
the fire a good deal, he found himself gazing fixedly at her. Her
manifold perfections filled him with the same feeling of astonishment
experienced by that beggar who awoke in the prince's chamber, clothed
in splendor, and with a royal domain in fee.

(Personally, I regard the domain which spread itself before Amidon, as
imperial.)

As she pronounced her gentle reproof, her eyes turned to his, and he
started guiltily.

"No," he confessed, "it was not the right thing. You must forgive me,
won't you?"

"I hope," said she, smiling, "I may be able to do more than that: maybe
I shall be so fortunate as to get you Estelle's forgiveness."

"Thank you," he said; and then seeking for safer ground: "Haven't you
something for us to look over--some plans or something?"

"'Or something'!" she repeated with a ripple of laughter.

It was the first time he had heard this laugh; and Marot's lines ran
through his mind:

"Good God! 'twould make the very streets and ways
Through which she passes, burst into a pleasure!
* * * * * *
No spell were wanting from the dead to raise me,
But only that sweet laugh wherewith she slays me!"

"'Or something!'" she repeated, I say; "it might just as well be the
profiles of a new pipe-line survey, for all the interest you take in
it. I oughtn't to look at them with you; but come, they're over here
on the table."

Somehow, this lady's air required the deferential offer of his arm; and