handkerchief was not lost
upon Maltboy, who straightway pulled out his extensive cambric, and
polished up their window too. This improvement of the medium of vision
on both sides, enabled the three friends to form some idea of the tall
girl's personal charms. Her figure was straight; her hair was black; her
eyes were brilliant; her complexion was healthy; she exhibited jewelry
in her ears, on her neck, her bosom, her wrists, and her fingers; her
dress gave her a great deal of trouble, as she leaned forward to
look out.

"Charming, is she not?" said Maltboy.

"Hard to say, at this distance," returned Overtop, who, feeling
neglected in the matter of the rustic fence, was controversially
disposed.

"You may find it so," said Maltboy; "but as for me, the flash of her
eyes--there, now, for instance!--is convincing enough."

"Perhaps you have seen her before," remarked Marcus Wilkeson.

"Perhaps," was that gentleman's answer, implying, by his accent and
accompanying wink, that he had seen her repeatedly.

"And said nothing about her to us, you inveterate humbug," added Marcus.

Mr. Maltboy felt the compliment conveyed in the word "humbug"--as most
people do when that accusation of shrewdness and deep dissembling is
brought against them--and smiled.

"I confess," he replied, as he polished the window simultaneously with
the performance of that process across the way, "I confess I have
noticed her several times; but what was the use of mentioning it to a
pair of woman haters like you?"

His two companions laughed pleasantly, thereby expressing their
gratification at the return compliment involved in the phrase
"woman haters."

"You are such dull fellows now," continued Maltboy, "that perhaps you
will say this fair stranger is not looking at us; that she does not
desire to be seen by us--that is, by me; and that her rubbing of the
window with a handkerchief is not a signal which she expects to be
answered."

"We say nothing," replied the disputatious Overtop. "We only wait for
proof. It is easy to find out whether a signal is meant or not. Rub the
window now."

Maltboy did so, concluding the act with an unmistakable flourish of the
handkerchief. Whereupon the tall girl averted her face, pulled down the
curtain, and eclipsed herself.

Wilkeson and Overtop laughed, and, with a common impulse, punched
Maltboy triumphantly in the ribs--a friendly salute that was always
vastly amusing to that gentleman.

"Be it un