ountains, and in the car of the railroad that runs to the top of Mount
Washington he met a classmate whom he had not seen for years, and this
classmate introduced Duncan to his sister, and this sister was a
remarkably pretty girl, and Duncan fell in love with her at first
sight, and by the time he got to the top of Mount Washington he was so
deep in love that he began to consider his own unworthiness, and to
wonder whether she might ever be induced to care for him a little--ever
so little."

"I don't think that is so marvellous a thing," said Dear Jones,
glancing at Baby Van Rensselaer.

"Who was she?" asked the Duchess, who had once lived in Philadelphia.

"She was Miss Kitty Sutton, of San Francisco, and she was a daughter of
old Judge Sutton, of the firm of Pixley & Sutton."

"A very respectable family," assented the Duchess.

"I hope she wasn't a daughter of that loud and vulgar old Mrs. Sutton
whom I met at Saratoga one summer four or five years ago?" said Dear
Jones.

"Probably she was," Uncle Larry responded.

"She was a horrid old woman. The boys used to call her Mother Gorgon."

"The pretty Kitty Sutton with whom Eliphalet Duncan had fallen in love
was the daughter of Mother Gorgon. But he never saw the mother, who was
in Frisco, or Los Angeles, or Santa Fe, or somewhere out West, and he
saw a great deal of the daughter, who was up in the White Mountains.
She was travelling with her brother and his wife, and as they journeyed
from hotel to hotel Duncan went with them, and filled out the
quartette. Before the end of the summer he began to think about
proposing. Of course he had lots of chances, going on excursions as
they were every day. He made up his mind to seize the first
opportunity, and that very evening he took her out for a moonlight row
on Lake Winipiseogee. As he handed her into the boat he resolved to do
it, and he had a glimmer of a suspicion that she knew he was going to
do it, too."

"Girls," said Dear Jones, "never go out in a row-boat at night with a
young man unless you mean to accept him."

"Sometimes it's best to refuse him, and get it over once for all," said
Baby Van Rensselaer, impersonally.

"As Eliphalet took the oars he felt a sudden chill. He tried to shake
it off, but in vain. He began to have a growing consciousness of
impending evil. Before he had taken ten strokes--and he was a swift
oarsman--he was aware of a mysterious presence between him and Miss
Sutton."

"Was i