delightedly.

With a desperately painful effort at nonchalance, Stanton shoved his
right fist into the brown hat and his left fist into the green one,
and raised them quizzically from the bed.

"Darned--good-looking--hats," he stammered.

"Oh, I say!" repeated the lawyer with accumulative delight.

Crimson to the tip of his ears, Stanton rolled his eyes frantically
towards the little note.

"She sent 'em up just to show 'em to me," he quoted wildly. "Just
'cause I'm laid up so and can't get out on the streets to see the
styles for myself.--And I've got to choose between them for her!" he
ejaculated. "She says she can't decide alone which one to keep!"

"Bully for her!" cried the lawyer, surprisingly, slapping his knee.
"The cunning little girl!"

Speechless with astonishment, Stanton lay and watched his visitor,
then "Well, which one would you choose?" he asked with unmistakable
relief.

The lawyer took the hats and scanned them carefully. "Let--me--see" he
considered. "Her hair is so blond--"

"No, it's red!" snapped Stanton.

With perfect courtesy the lawyer swallowed his mistake. "Oh, excuse
me," he said. "I forgot. But with her height--"

"She hasn't any height," groaned Stanton. "I tell you she's little."

"Choose to suit yourself," said the lawyer coolly. He himself had
admired Cornelia from afar off.

The next night, to Stanton's mixed feelings of relief and
disappointment the "surprise" seemed to consist in the fact that
nothing happened at all. Fully until midnight the sense of relief
comforted him utterly. But some time after midnight, his hungry mind,
like a house-pet robbed of an accustomed meal, began to wake and fret
and stalk around ferociously through all the long, empty, aching,
early morning hours, searching for something novel to think about.

By supper-time the next evening he was in an irritable mood that made
him fairly clutch the special delivery letter out of the postman's
hand. It was rather a thin, tantalizing little letter, too. All it
said was,

"To-night, Dearest, until one o'clock, in a cabbage-colored
gown all shimmery with green and blue and September
frost-lights, I'm going to sit up by my white birch-wood
fire and read aloud to you. Yes! Honest-Injun! And out of
Browning, too. Did you notice your copy was marked? What
shall I read to you? Shall it be

"'If I could have that little head of hers
Painted upon a background of pale