ad they met before, and if so, when and where? Perhaps some
light may be thrown on all these questions, a little later in the
progress of this story.

At the present juncture two of the parties were hungry; the third what
is called "peckish," which means a _little_ hungry and quite capable of
bolting a sandwich or the wing of a cold turkey; and the fourth very
much in a hurry and anxious to get away to his business.

"We sent our carriage home, knowing that we could not get through
Broadway while the troops were passing," said Bell Crawford, "with
orders to have it call for us late in the afternoon, at a friend's house
near Union Square. We were just going down to Taylor's for a little
lunch, when this awkward affair occurred: may we ask you to join us,
gentlemen?"

"Oh yes," said Josephine Harris, with her school-girl pleasure at the
proposition ill-concealed. "That will be--yes, well, I may as well say
out what I think--that will be jolly."

"As for my friend Leslie here," said Harding, "_he_ has nothing to do,
and can certainly ask no greater pleasure than to join you. We were just
about separating when we saw you. For myself, I _must_ forego the
pleasure, for I have the misfortune to be a busy man, and I must really
wish you a hurried good-morning, leaving you in my friend's care."

With a promise to call upon the ladies at his earliest convenience, the
young merchant hurried away, with every evidence that his thoughts were
intent upon the balance at his banker's and the question whether certain
regular customers who were to have called during the morning had been
duly impressed by his clerks with the merits of certain choice styles of
goods, rapidly on the rise, that he would himself have commended to
their particular attention. And yet there are odd mixtures, sometimes,
even in the minds of merchants--mixtures in which customers become
blended with curls and profits with profiles; for Walter Lane Harding,
as he wasted yet one more moment to step into Gilsey's and light a
choice Havana, indulged in a train of thought which might have been
shaped into words something in the manner following:

"A pretty woman--that Miss Crawford, decidedly ladylike--which the other
is _not_, however pleasant a companion. I should as soon think of
falling in love with a handsome bombshell, as with _her_. No knowing
when she might explode. Now if I had met _Miss Crawford_ at Newport two
years ago, who knows but affairs might have