hed, and very much put out, especially as my mother was away.
So far from its having been, as with the Misses Brooke, the first
thing to occur to him, he repeatedly and emphatically declared that it
was the very last thing he should have expected. He could neither
imagine what had made the merchant think of proposing to me, nor what
had made me so ready to refuse him. Then they were in the very middle
of a crabbed pamphlet, in which Ivan's superior knowledge of German
had been invaluable. It was most inconvenient.

"'Why didn't I like poor Ivan?'

"Ah, my child, did I not like him!

"'Then why was I so cross to him?'

"Indeed, Ida, I think the old ladies' 'ways' were chiefly to blame for
this. Their well-meant but disastrous ways of making you feel that you
were doing wrong, or in the wrong, over matters the most
straight-forward and natural. But I was safe under the wing of my
mother, before I saw Ivan again; and--many as were the years he and I
were permitted to spend together--I think I may truthfully say that I
was never cross to him any more.

"'What did he say in that letter that made me cry?'

"He asked to be allowed to make himself better known to me, before I
sent him quite away. And this developed an ingenious notion in my
father's brain, that no better opportunity could, from every point of
view, be found for this, than that I should be allowed to sit with
them in the study whilst he and Ivan went on with the German pamphlet.

"The next call I paid at Bellevue Cottage was to announce my
engagement, and I had some doubt of the reception my news might meet
with. But I had no kinder or more loving congratulations than those of
the two sisters. Small allusion was made to bygones. But when Miss
Martha murmured in my ear--

"'You'll forgive my little fussiness and over-anxiety, dear Mary. One
would be glad to guard one's young friends from some of the
difficulties and disappointments one has known oneself--' I thought of
the past life of the sisters, and returned her kiss with tenderness.
Doubtless she had feared that the merchant might be trifling with my
feelings, and that a thousand other ills might happen when the little
love affair was no longer under her careful management. But all ending
well, was well; and not even the Bellevue cats were more petted by the
old ladies than we two were in our brief and sunny betrothal.

"Sunny, although for the most part it was winter time. When we would
sit by the