ready to go back half
an hour later and accept pardon and be on the footing of last summer
again. Even now he debated with himself whether it was too late to call;
but, decidedly, a quarter to ten seemed late. The next day he determined
never to call upon the Leightons again; but he had no reason for this;
it merely came into a transitory scheme of conduct, of retirement from
the society of women altogether; and after dinner he went round to see
them.

He asked for the ladies, and they all three received him, Alma not
without a surprise that intimated itself to him, and her mother with
no appreciable relenting; Miss Woodburn, with the needlework which she
found easier to be voluble over than a book, expressed in her welcome a
neutrality both cordial to Beaton and loyal to Alma.

"Is it snowing outdo's?" she asked, briskly, after the greetings were
transacted. "Mah goodness!" she said, in answer to his apparent surprise
at the question. "Ah mahght as well have stayed in the Soath, for all
the winter Ah have seen in New York yet."

"We don't often have snow much before New-Year's," said Beaton.

"Miss Woodburn is wild for a real Northern winter," Mrs. Leighton
explained.

"The othah naght Ah woke up and looked oat of the window and saw all the
roofs covered with snow, and it turned oat to be nothing but moonlaght.
Ah was never so disappointed in mah lahfe," said Miss Woodburn.

"If you'll come to St. Barnaby next summer, you shall have all the
winter you want," said Alma.

"I can't let you slander St. Barnaby in that way," said Beaton, with the
air of wishing to be understood as meaning more than he said.

"Yes?" returned Alma, coolly. "I didn't know you were so fond of the
climate."

"I never think of it as a climate. It's a landscape. It doesn't matter
whether it's hot or cold."

"With the thermometer twenty below, you'd find that it mattered," Alma
persisted.

"Is that the way you feel about St. Barnaby, too, Mrs. Leighton?" Beaton
asked, with affected desolation.

"I shall be glad enough to go back in the summer," Mrs. Leighton
conceded.

"And I should be glad to go now," said Beaton, looking at Alma. He had
the dummy of 'Every Other Week' in his hand, and he saw Alma's eyes
wandering toward it whenever he glanced at her. "I should be glad to
go anywhere to get out of a job I've undertaken," he continued, to
Mrs. Leighton. "They're going to start some sort of a new illustrated
magazine, and they've