hese things less and less, and wondered why.

The fact is, our hero had begun an experiment with his little friend
that we would never advise a young man to try on one of these intense,
quiet, soft-seeming women, whose whole life is inward. He had determined
to find out whether she loved him before he committed himself to her;
and the strength of a whole book of martyrs is in women to endure and
to bear without flinching before they will surrender the gate of this
citadel of silence. Moreover, our hero had begun his siege with
precisely the worst weapons.

For on the night that he returned and found Mara conversing with a
stranger, the suspicion arose in his mind that somehow Mara might be
particularly interested in him, and instead of asking her, which anybody
might consider the most feasible step in the case, he asked Sally
Kittridge.

Sally's inborn, inherent love of teasing was up in a moment. Did she
know anything of that Mr. Adams? Of course she did,--a young lawyer of
one of the best Boston families,--a splendid fellow; she wished any such
luck might happen to her! Was Mara engaged to him? What would he give to
know? Why didn't he ask Mara? Did he expect her to reveal her friend's
secrets? Well, she shouldn't,--report said Mr. Adams was well-to-do in
the world, and had expectations from an uncle,--and didn't Moses think
he was interesting in conversation? Everybody said what a conquest it
was for an Orr's Island girl, etc., etc. And Sally said the rest with
many a malicious toss and wink and sly twinkle of the dimples of her
cheek, which might mean more or less, as a young man of imaginative
temperament was disposed to view it. Now this was all done in pure
simple love of teasing. We incline to think phrenologists have as yet
been very incomplete in their classification of faculties, or they would
have appointed a separate organ for this propensity of human nature.
Certain persons, often the most kind-hearted in the world, and who would
not give pain in any serious matter, seem to have an insatiable appetite
for those small annoyances we commonly denominate teasing,--and Sally
was one of this number.

She diverted herself infinitely in playing upon the excitability of
Moses,--in awaking his curiosity, and baffling it, and tormenting him
with a whole phantasmagoria of suggestions and assertions, which played
along so near the line of probability, that one could never tell which
might be fancy and which might b