me have a few weeks, with your continued favor, and I
ask no more. Many, many thanks," and, seizing her hand, he pressed it
to his lips.

"Will you not now allow me to see my fair Henrietta?" he asked.

"Oh, I have been a little flurried, and did forget it was quite dark.
I'll light the lamp in a minute."

Etta's sweet voice was now heard humming a song in the next room. She
had returned from her visit, and as Miss Henrietta succeeded in
lighting the lamp, her bright face peeped in the door, and she said:

"Aunty, Squire Sloughman is coming up the walk."

"Bless her sweet face! There is my Henrietta now!" exclaimed the
visitor, and before the shade was adjusted on the lamp, she was alone.
The handsome stranger was in the next room with--Etta!

A little scream, an exclamation of surprise from Etta, followed by the
deep, manly voice of Mr. Linton, saying:

"Dearest Henrietta, I have your aunt's permission to win you, if I
can."

"Henrietta! Little baby Etta! Sure enough, that was her name, too.
What an idiot she had been!" thought Henrietta, the elder. "Oh! she
hoped she had not exposed her mistake! Maybe he had not understood
her!"

But Squire Sloughman was waiting for some one to admit him, and she
had no more time to think over the recent conversation, or to
determine whether or not Mr. Linton was aware of her blunder.

Squire Sloughman was cordially welcomed, and after being seated a
while, observed:

"You have got a visitor, I see," pointing to the stranger's hat lying
on the table beside him.

"Yes, Etta's got company. The stranger that boarded at Miss Plimpkins'
last summer. He sent Etta a valentine, and has now come himself,"
returned Miss Henrietta.

"A valentine! what for?"

"To ask her to have him, surely. And I suppose he'll be taking her off
to town to live, pretty soon."

"And you, what will you do? It will be awful lonely here for you,"
said the squire.

"Oh! he's coming out now," thought Miss Henrietta. And she gave him a
better chance by her reply:

"Well, I don't know that anybody cares for that. I guess no one will
run away with me."

But she was disappointed; it came not, what she hoped for, just then.
Yet the Squire seemed very uneasy. At length he said:

"I got a valentine myself, to-day."

"You! What sort of a one? Comic, funny, or real in earnest?" asked
Miss Henrietta.

"Oh! there is nothing funny about it--not a bit of laugh; all cry."

"Land! a crying valentine."