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of all the season's delicacies, solid and liquid, to come home hilarious
by moonlight. That, however, is not the way the little love-imps do
their work in the world; or is it possible that they are not imps at all
who provoke and stimulate and arrange these strange marriages--not imps,
but honest, chastening little character-builders? In any event, the
moment that John Hathaway first beheld Susanna Nelson was the moment of
his surrender; yet the wooing was as incomprehensible as that of a
fragile, dainty little hummingbird by a pompous, greedy, big-breasted
robin.

Susanna was like a New England anemone. Her face was oval in shape and
as smooth and pale as a pearl. Her hair was dark, not very heavy, and as
soft as a child's. Her lips were delicate and sensitive, her eyes a cool
gray,--clear, steady, and shaded by darker lashes. When John Hathaway
met her shy, maidenly glance and heard her pretty, dovelike voice, it is
strange he did not see that there was a bit too much saint in her to
make her a willing comrade of his gay, roistering life. But as a matter
of fact, John Hathaway saw nothing at all; nothing but that Susanna
Nelson was a lovely girl and he wanted her for his own. The type was one
he had never met before, one that allured him by its mysteries and
piqued him by its shy aloofness.

John had a "way with him,"--a way that speedily won Susanna; and after
all there was a best to him as well as a worst. He had a twinkling eye,
an infectious laugh, a sweet disposition, and while he was
over-susceptible to the charm of a pretty face, he had a chivalrous
admiration for all women, coupled, it must be confessed, with a decided
lack of discrimination in values. His boyish light-heartedness had a
charm for everybody, including Susanna; a charm that lasted until she
discovered that his heart was light not only when it ought to be light,
but when it ought to be heavy.

He was very much in love with her, but there was nothing particularly
exclusive, unique, individual, or interesting about his passion at that
time. It was of the every-day sort which carries a well-meaning man to
the altar, and sometimes, in cases of exceptional fervor and duration,
even a little farther. Stock sizes of this article are common and
inexpensive, and John Hathaway's love when he married Susanna was,
judged by the highest standards, about as trivial an affair as Cupid
ever put upon the market or a man ever offered to a woman. Susanna on
t