r the other in his glass.

"Ah--aw--I will bring her home," I answered, evading the question--"my
love, my bliss, my delight!"

"He is awful spoony on her," said Bear in a disgusted tone.

"He is tipsy," whispered Percy as I sat down with a tremor in my voice
and wiped my eyes with a napkin.

Then Perce began to lecture me in an injured tone: "I say, it is really
too bad of you. I should not have believed it if you had not told us
yourself. To go and get married like any fool of a fella' that hasn't
forty thou' a year, like any common man--it's too rough."

"I know it, Perce," I replied, "but we superior people must set an
example--the world expects it of us. The only question is, how to make a
proper choice."

I remember very little after, except that the lights shone dimmer
through the cigar-smoke, that there was much noise from popping corks,
and occasionally a breakage of glass, and I think I made another speech.
Next morning I awoke with a very robust and well-defined head-ache.

A few days later I started for the back-woods, with Wordsworth packed in
my trunk, he being the writer most congenial to my present state of
mind. Once seated in the cars, I looked with pleasure on each pastoral
scene as it came into view, and gazed at the milkmaids while thinking
romantically of my love. I took a nap, and awoke respectfully pressing
the handle of my portmanteau and murmuring a proposal to my wild flower.

It was late when I arrived at the little village near which my friend
resided, and I resolved to spend the night at the modest inn of the
place. The gay singing of birds, mingled with the ringing of Sunday
bells, caused my drowsy eyes to open on the morrow. A happy thought came
to me as I lay enjoying the delightful freshness of all around me: "I
will go to church: my little Innocence will be there. I know she is
pious. As unconscious as the birds, and with as sweet a voice, she will,
like them, be praising her Maker this bright morning."

I began to dress, looking each moment from the window with the hope that
she might pass by. The street was quiet--no one to be seen. Presently,
from a house near, tripped two pretty girls, and I eagerly came forward
to see them. "If it is not my rose herself," I thought, "it maybe some
relation--cousin, sister, friend: I am interested in the whole town
since _she_ lives here." The girls came nearer. They walked without
affectation: you could imagine that the spirit of Modesty