dow, was a contrast that evidently
attracted others than himself. It was with an odd mingling of pride
and jealousy that he watched the admiring yet respectful glances of the
passers-by, some of whom turned to look again, and one or two to
retrace their steps and follow her at a decorous distance. This caused
him to quicken his own pace, with a new anxiety and a remorseful sense
of wasted opportunity. What a booby he had been, not to have made more
of his contiguity to this charming girl--to have been frightened at the
naive decorum of her maidenly instincts! He reached her side, and
raised his hat with a trepidation at her new-found graces--with a
boldness that was defiant of her other admirers. She blushed slightly.

"I thought you'd overtake me before," she said naively. "I saw YOU
ever so long ago."

He stammered, with an equal simplicity, that he had not dared to.

She looked a little frightened again, and then said hurriedly: "I only
thought that I would meet you on Montgomery Street, and we would walk
home together. I don't like to go out alone, and mother cannot always
go with me. Tappington never cared to take me out--I don't know why.
I think he didn't like the people staring and stop ping us. But they
stare more--don't you think?--when one is alone. So I thought if you
were coming straight home we might come together--unless you have
something else to do?"

Herbert impulsively reiterated his joy at meeting her, and averred that
no other engagement, either of business or pleasure, could or would
stand in his way. Looking up, however, it was with some consternation
that he saw they were already within a block of the house.

"Suppose we take a turn around the hill and come back by the old street
down the steps?" he suggested earnestly.

The next moment he regretted it. The frightened look returned to her
eyes; her face became melancholy and formal again.

"No!" she said quickly. "That would be taking a walk with you like
these young girls and their young men on Saturdays. That's what Ellen
does with the butcher's boy on Sundays. Tappington often used to meet
them. Doing the 'Come, Philanders,' as he says you call it."

It struck Herbert that the didactic Tappington's method of inculcating
a horror of slang in his sister's breast was open to some objection;
but they were already on the steps of their house, and he was too much
mortified at the reception of his last unhappy suggestion to mak