show us the house at once.

The approach was certainly delightful. We dashed into the gloom of a
mass of spruces, pines, and arbor-vitaes, and stopped suddenly in front
of a little, low cottage, which consisted principally of additions, no
one of which was after any particular architectural order. Sophronia
gazed an instant; her face assumed an ecstatic expression which I had
not seen since the day of our engagement; she threw her arms about my
neck, her head drooped upon my bosom, and she whispered:

"My ideal!"

Then this matchless woman, intuitively realizing that the moment for
action had arrived, reassumed her natural dignity, and, with the air of
Mrs. Scott Siddons in "Elizabeth," exclaimed:

"Enough! We take it!"

"Hadn't you better examine the interior first, my love?" I suggested.

"Were the interior only that of a barn," remarked my consistent mate,
"my decision would not be affected thereby. The eternal unities are
never disunited, nor are--"

"I don't believe I've got the key with me," said the agent; "but perhaps
we can get in through one of the windows."

The agent tied his horse and disappeared behind the house. Again
Sophronia's arm encircled me, and she murmured:

"Oh, Pierre, what bliss!"

"It's a good way from the station, pet," I ventured to remark.

Sophronia's enthusiasm gave place to scorn; she withdrew her
affectionate demonstration, and replied:

"Spoken like a real man! The practical, always--the ideal, never! Once I
dreamed of the companionship of a congenial spirit, but, alas! 'A good
way from the station!' Were _I_ a man, I would, to reside in such a
bower, plod cheerily over miles of prosaic clods."

"And you'd get your shapely boots most shockingly muddy," I thought, as
the agent opened one of the front windows and invited us to enter.

"French windows, too!" exclaimed Sophronia; "oh Pierre! And see that
exquisite old mantel; it looks as if it had been carved from ebony upon
the banks of one of the Queen of the Adriatic's noiseless by-ways. And
these tiny rooms, how cozy--how like fairy land! Again I declare, we
will take it! Let us return at once to the city--how I loathe the
thought of treading its noisy thoroughfares again!--and order our
carpets and furniture."

"Are you sure you won't be lonesome here, darling?" I asked. "It is
quite a distance from any neighbors."

"A true woman is never lonesome when she can commune with Nature,"
replied Sophronia. "Besides," she