reat
astonishment Miss Pilgrim asked Billy's permission to leave him. It was
granted with all the courtesy of a _preux chevalier_, on the condition,
readily assented to by the lady, that she should dance one Lancers with
him during the evening.

"Dear me!" exclaimed Lu, after Billy had gone back like a superior being
to assist at the childish amusement of his contemporaries, "Would any
body ever suppose that was our Billy?"

"I should, my dear sister," said I, with proud satisfaction; "but you
remember I always was just to Billy."

Left free, I went myself to hunt up Daniel. I found his door locked and
a light shining through the keyhole, as Billy had stated. I made no
attempt to enter by knocking; but going to my room and opening the
window next his, leaned out as far as I could, shoved up his sash with
my cane, and pushed aside his curtain. Such an unusual method of
communication could not fail to bring him to the window with a rush.
When he saw me he trembled like a guilty thing, his countenance fell,
and, no longer able to feign absence, he unlocked his door and let me
enter by the normal mode.

"Why, Daniel Lovegrove, my nephew, what does this mean? Are you sick?"

"Uncle Edward, I am not sick,--and this means that I am a fool. Even a
little boy like Billy puts me to shame. I feel humbled to the very dust.
I wish I'd been a missionary and got massacred by savages. Oh that I'd
been permitted to wear damp stockings in childhood, or that my mother
hadn't carried me through the measles! If it weren't wrong to take my
life into my own hands, I'd open that window, and--and--sit in a draught
this very evening! Oh, yes! I'm just that bitter! Oh, oh, oh!"

And Daniel paced the floor with strides of frenzy.

"Well, my dear fellow, let's look at the matter calmly a minute. What
brought on this sudden attack? You seemed doing well enough the first
ten minutes after we came down. I was only out of your sight long enough
to speak to the Rumbullion party who had just come in, and when I turned
around you were gone. Now you are in this fearful condition. What is
there in the Rumbullions to start you off on such a bender of
bashfulness as this which I here behold?"

"Rumbullion indeed!" said Daniel. "A hundred Rumbullions could not make
me feel as I do. But _she_ can shake me into a whirlwind with her little
finger; and _she_ came with the Rumbullions!"

"What! D'you--Miss Pilgrim?"

"Miss Pilgrim!"

I labored with Da