day while he was here."

"La, do tell me!" said Jerusha. "How long was he with you, Mrs. Sykes?"

"A day and a half," returned that lady. "He came up in the morning-train
and returned next evening."

"Well," said Mrs. Fleetfoot, "they do say Alice Orville is engaged to
Fred. Milder."

"Sakes alive!" exclaimed Miss Jerusha. "I never heard a word about it
before! Well, Mrs. Milder was always standing up for Mrs. Orville. I
thought it meant something. Now I remember, Fred. was at the last sewing
circle and walked home with Alice. I thought strange of it then, for it
was hardly a dozen yards to her house, and some of us young ladies had
to walk five times as far all alone. Who told you of the engagement?"

"La, I can't remember now!" said Mrs. Fleetfoot; "but I've heard of it
ever so many times."

"Well, they'll make a pretty couple enough," observed Mrs. Sykes;
"though I rather fancied Alice was engaged to somebody off south, 'cause
she seems sort of downcast sometimes, and keeps so close since she got
home."

"O, la, that's cause she's got wind of the story that was going about
here before she came back! I wonder if there was any truth in it?" said
Mrs. Fleetfoot.

"I don't know; I never put much confidence in flying stories," remarked
Jerusha.

"Neither do I!" said Mrs. Sykes; "or take the trouble to repeat, if I
chance to hear them."

"Nor I!" chimed in Mrs. Fleetfoot. "If there is anything I mortally
abhor, it is a tattler and busybody."

"Our sentiments, exactly!" exclaimed the other two ladies in concert.

Hannah now entered and announced tea, and the trio of scrupulous,
conscientious ladies repaired to the dining-room to luxuriate on short
rolls and Mrs. Frye's neighborly doughnuts.

Mrs. Orville had a pleasant residence on the lake shore, and everything
wore a brighter aspect in the eyes of the mother, since her beloved
daughter had returned to enliven the old home by her sunshiny presence.
But Alice had passed from the gay-hearted child to the thoughtful woman
in the two years she had been away, and there was a mild, pensive light
in her dark eye that spoke of a chastened spirit within. Still, she was
usually cheerful, and always, even in her most melancholy hours, an
agreeable companion. Beautiful in person, highly educated and
accomplished, her conversation, whether tinged with sadness or enlivened
by wit and humor, exercised a strange, fascinating power over her
listeners.

Alice had left Ne