hall find his match in me," and Sally nodded to a cat-bird that
sat perched on a pine-tree, as if she had a secret understanding with
him, and the cat-bird went off into a perfect roulade of imitations of
all that was going on in the late bird-operas of the season.

Sally was roused from her revery by a spray of goldenrod that was thrown
into her lap by an invisible hand, and Moses soon appeared at the
window.

"There's a plume that would be becoming to your hair," he said; "stay,
let me arrange it."

"No, no; you'll tumble my hair,--what can you know of such things?"

Moses held the spray aloft, and leaned toward her with a sort of quiet,
determined insistence.

"By your leave, fair lady," he said, wreathing it in her hair, and then
drawing back a little, he looked at her with so much admiration that
Sally felt herself blush.

"Come, now, I dare say you've made a fright of me," she said, rising and
instinctively turning to the looking-glass; but she had too much
coquetry not to see how admirably the golden plume suited her black
hair, and the brilliant eyes and cheeks; she turned to Moses again, and
courtesied, saying "Thank you, sir," dropping her eyelashes with a mock
humility.

"Come, now," said Moses; "I am sent after you to come and spend the
evening; let's walk along the seashore, and get there by degrees."

And so they set out; but the path was circuitous, for Moses was always
stopping, now at this point and now at that, and enacting some of those
thousand little by-plays which a man can get up with a pretty woman.
They searched for smooth pebbles where the waves had left
them,--many-colored, pink and crimson and yellow and brown, all smooth
and rounded by the eternal tossings of the old sea that had made
playthings of them for centuries, and with every pebble given and taken
were things said which should have meant more and more, had the play
been earnest. Had Moses any idea of offering himself to Sally? No; but
he was in one of those fluctuating, unresisting moods of mind in which
he was willing to lie like a chip on the tide of present emotion, and
let it rise and fall and dash him when it liked; and Sally never had
seemed more beautiful and attractive to him than that afternoon, because
there was a shade of reality and depth about her that he had never seen
before.

"Come on, and let me show you my hermitage," said Moses, guiding her
along the slippery projecting rocks, all covered with yellow tre