own
herself. Any trials in this world or any dangers in the next, she
declared, were preferable to sitting opposite to such a person as Mrs.
Logan Rittenhouse, who talked nothing but uninteresting scandal and
crochet, and next to Mr. Pennington Brown, who talked only about
peoples' great-grandfathers and great-aunts.

It was with a lively alarm that Mr. Port noted these signs of
discontent, together with returning symptoms of the grumpiness which
had disturbed his comfort and digestion at Saratoga; and it was most
selfishly in his own self-interest that he tried to think of something
that would afford his niece amusement. Miss Lee, when she perceived that
her intelligently laid plans were working successfully, was graciously
pleased to assist him.

"It is a great pity, Uncle Hutchinson," she vouchsafed to remark on the
fourth day of suppressed domestic sunshine, "that you don't like tennis.
Don't you think, for your angel's sake, that you could go for just a
little while this afternoon? There's going to be a capital match this
afternoon, and your angel does so want to see it. You haven't been
very--very agreeable the past two or three days, you dear, and I fear
that your liver must be a little out of order. Really, you haven't given
your angel a single chance to be affectionate--and unless she can be
affectionate and sweet and clinging, and things like that, you know,
your poor angel is not happy at all. Suppose we try the tennis for just
half an hour or so? It won't be much of a sacrifice for you, and it will
make your angel so happy that she will make herself dearer to you than
ever, you precious thing."

This form of address was disconcerting to Mr. Port, for during the
period to which Miss Lee referred he certainly had been trying--not very
cleverly, perhaps, for such efforts were not at all in his line, but
still to the best of his ability--to make himself as agreeable as
possible; and the effort on the part of his niece to be angelic, of
which she spoke so confidently, he could not but think had fallen rather
more than a little short of absolute success. The one ray of comfort
that he extracted from Dorothy's utterance was her reference to herself
as his angel; he had come to understand that the use of this term was
a sign of fair weather, and he valued it accordingly. But even for the
sake of fair weather Mr. Port was not yet prepared to expose his elderly
joints to the draughty discomforts of the galleries ov