ker's general amiability; and yet, what must I
do, but go and fall in love with her."

"Oh!" from Fanny.

"Yes--true as truth itself; and, as a consequence, my friends, for
the first, and only time, had a good joke against me. They had a tale
about my going to his Excellency, the Governor's palace, to look at
the great map there--all for the purpose of finding where the country
was in which she lived; for, observe, she was only on a visit to
Williamsburg--of studying out this boundary, and that--this river to
cross, and that place to stop at,--the time it would take to carry my
affections over them--and all the thousand details. Of course, this
was not true, my darling Fanny, at least--"

"Ralph, you shall stop talking to me like a child!" exclaimed Fanny,
who had listened to the details of Mr. Ashley's passion with more and
more constraint; "please to remember that I am not a baby, sir."

Ralph looked at the lovely face, with its rosy-cheeks and flashing
eyes, and burst out laughing.

"There, you are as angry as Cleopatra, when the slave brought her bad
news--and, by Jove, Fanny, you are twice as lovely. Really! you have
improved wonderfully. Your eyes, at this moment, are as brilliant
as fire--your lips like carnation--and your face like sunlit gold;
recollect, I'm a poet. I'm positively rejoiced at the good luck which
made me bring such a lovely expression into your fair countenance."

Fanny turned her head away.

"Come now, Fanny," said Ralph, seriously, "I do believe you are going
to find fault with my nonsense."

No reply.

Mr. Ralph Ashley heaved a sigh; and was silent.

"You treat me like a child," said Fanny, reproachfully; "I am not a
child."

"You certainly are not, my dearest Fanny--you are a charming young
lady--the most delicious of your sex."

And Mr. Ralph Ashley accompanied these words with a glance so
ludicrously languishing, that Fanny, unable to command herself, burst
into laughter; and the quarrel was all made up, if quarrel it indeed
had been.

"You _were_ a child in old times," said Mr. Ashley, throwing his foot
elegantly over his knee; "and, I recollect, had a perfect genius for
blindman's-buff; but, of course, at sixteen you have 'put away' all
those infantile or 'childish things'--though I am sincerely rejoiced
to see that you have not 'become a man.'"

Fanny laughed.

"I wish I was," she said.

"What?"

"Why a man."

"Oh! you're very well as you are;--though if you we