of how I have LOWERED
myself! How I have stooped to . . . But there! I am sure that supper
of yours must be waiting. Pray condescend to convey my regrets to the
faithful--what is her name? Odd that I should forget a name like THAT.
Oh, yes! Dorinda!--Pray convey my regrets to the faithful Dorinda
for being unwittingly the cause of the delay, and assure her that the
offense will NOT be repeated. Good-by, Mr. Paine."

She walked off, between the granite posts and along the curved drive.
This time I made no attempt to call her back. The storm had burst so
unexpectedly and had developed into such a hurricane that I had had time
to do little more than bend my head before it. But I had had time enough
to grow angry. I would not have called her back then for the world. She
had insulted me, not once only, but again and again. I stood and watched
her go on her way, and then I turned and went on my own.

The parting had come. The acquaintance was broken off; not precisely as
I had intended it to be broken, but broken, nevertheless, and ended
for good and all. I was glad of it. There would be no more fishing
excursions, no more gifts of flowers and books, no more charity calls.
The "common fellow" was free from the disturbing influence and he was
glad of it--heartily glad of it.

Yet his gladness was not as apparent to others as it should, by all
that was consistent, have been. Lute, evidently, observed no traces of
transcendent happiness, when I encountered him in the back yard, beside
the woodpile, sharpening the kindling hatchet with a whetstone, a
process peculiarly satisfying to his temperament because it took such a
long time to achieve a noticeable result.

"Hello, Ros!" he hailed. "Why! what ails you?"

"Ails me?" I repeated, crossly. "Nothing ails me, of course."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it. You look as if you'd lost your last friend."

"I haven't lost any friends. Far from it."

"Nobody's dead, then?"

"No. Though I could find some who are half dead without trying very
hard."

More perfectly good sarcasm wasted. Lute inquired eagerly if I meant
old Mrs. Lobelia Glover. "I heard yesterday she was pretty feeble," he
added. "'Tain't to be expected she'll last a long spell, at her age.
Doctor Quimby says she had a spine in her back for twenty years."

I made no comment upon poor Mrs. Glover's surprising affliction. I
merely grunted and went into the house. Dorinda looked at me curiously.

"What's the trouble?"