ee. With
such blissful pain as none but lovers know, Mr. Arbuton saw her break
the egg upon the edge of the coffee-pot, and let it drop therein, and
then, with a charming frenzy, stir it round and round. It was a picture
of domestic suggestion, a subtle insinuation of home, the unconscious
appeal of inherent housewifery to inherent husbandhood. At the crash of
the eggshell he trembled; the swift agitation of the coffee and the egg
within the pot made him dizzy.

"Sha'n't I stir that for you, Miss Ellison?" he said, awkwardly.

"O dear, no!" she answered in surprise at a man's presuming to stir
coffee; "but you may go get me some water at the creek, if you please."

She gave him a pitcher, and he went off to the brook, which was but a
minute's distance away. This minute, however, left her alone, for the
first time that day, with both Dick and Fanny, and a silence fell upon
all three at once. They could not help looking at one another; and then
the colonel, to show that he was not thinking of anything, began to
whistle, and Mrs. Ellison rebuked him for whistling.

"Why not?" he asked. "It isn't a funeral, is it?"

"Of course it isn't," said Mrs. Ellison; and Kitty, who had been
blushing to the verge of tears, laughed instead, and then was consumed
with vexation when Mr. Arbuton came up, feeling that he must suspect
himself the motive of her ill-timed mirth. "The champagne ought to be
cooled, I suppose," observed Mrs. Ellison, when the coffee had been
finally stirred and set to boil on the coals.

"I'm best acquainted with the brook," said Mr. Arbuton, "and I know just
the eddy in it where the champagne will cool soonest."

"Then you shall take it there," answered the governess of the feast; and
Mr. Arbuton duteously set off with the bottle in his hand.

The pitcher of water which he had already brought stood in the grass; by
a sudden movement of the skirt, Kitty knocked it over. The colonel made
a start forward; Mrs. Ellison arrested him with a touch, while she bent
a look of ineffable admiration upon Kitty.

"Now, I'll teach myself," said Kitty, "that I can't be so clumsy with
impunity. I'll go and fill that pitcher again myself." She hurried after
Mr. Arbuton; they scarcely spoke going or coming; but the constraint
that Kitty felt was nothing to that she had dreaded in seeking to escape
from the tacit raillery of the colonel and the championship of Fanny.
Yet she trembled to realize that already her life had be