, and what kind of novels you prefer. There ought to be about
ten topics. These boats are sometimes very slow. Can't you suggest
something, Miss Kenton? There is no hurry! We've got four to talk over,
for we must bring up the arrears, you know. And now we'll begin with
personal history. Your sister doesn't approve of me, does she?"

"My sister?" Ellen faltered, and, between the conscience to own the fact
and the kindness to deny it, she stopped altogether.

"I needn't have asked. She told me so herself, in almost as many words.
She said I was slippery, and as close as a trap. Miss Kenton! I have the
greatest wish to know whether I affect you as both slippery and close!"

"I don't always know what Lottie means."

"She means what she says; and I feel that I am under condemnation till
I reform. I don't know how to stop being slippery, but I'm determined to
stop being close. Will you tell her that for me? Will you tell her
that you never met an opener, franker person?--of course, except
herself!--and that so far from being light I seemed to you particularly
heavy? Say that I did nothing but talk about myself, and that when you
wanted to talk about yourself you couldn't get in a word edgewise. Do
try, now, Miss Kenton, and see if you can! I don't want you to invent a
character for me, quite."

"Why, there's nothing to say about me," she began in compliance with his
gayety, and then she fell helpless from it.

"Well, then, about Tuskingum. I should like to hear about Tuskingum, so
much!"

"I suppose we like it because we've always lived there. You haven't been
much in the West, have you?"

"Not as much as I hope to be." He had found that Western people were
sometimes sensitive concerning their section and were prepared to
resent complacent ignorance of it. "I've always thought it must be very
interesting."

"It isn't," said the girl. "At least, not like the East. I used to be
provoked when the lecturers said anything like that; but when you've
been to New York you see what they mean."

"The lecturers?" he queried.

"They always stayed at our house when they lectured in Tuskingum."

"Ah! Oh yes," said Breckon, grasping a situation of which he had heard
something, chiefly satirical. "Of course. And is your father--is Judge
Kenton literary? Excuse me!"

"Only in his history. He's writing the history of his regiment; or he
gets the soldiers to write down all they can remember of the war, and
then he puts their sto