ese people, when Randolph Chance walked in upon
me. His kind heart needed no prompting to join in our little attentions,
and he was of especial use in getting a vehicle to take the family home.

After they had gone, and we found ourselves alone, a great embarrassment
seemed to seize him in a fatal grasp.

By and by I realized that I was really getting incensed, and I was
afraid I should soon be in the position of the man who went to another,
whom he had ill-treated, to apologize for his bad conduct, and, "By
Jove, sir"--to use his own phrase, "I hit him again."

I tried to keep my letter before my eyes. I didn't want to be forced by
that inexorable tyrant--conscience--to write another. And I should, if I
didn't hold on to myself, and this man didn't behave differently.

To avoid a clash, I set to work to clear away some of the confusion
consequent upon the accident, and he helped me in this.

One would suppose that might serve to cool him, and it did indeed, to
such an extent that, upon our settling down again, he began the most
commonplace conversation, giving me some incidents of his trip;
discussing the scenery; weather; population, and general aspects of
Buffalo; with much more of the dryest, most disagreeable stuff, that a
man ever had the temerity to use, as a means of wasting a woman's
evening.

To employ a childish phrase--it best fits the occasion--I grew madder and
madder, until at last matters within me rose to such a height, that when
he began to tell of his brother's house in Buffalo, and to dwell upon
the peculiarities of its furniture, I felt peculiar enough to hurl all
of mine at him.

The number of things I thought of that evening would form a library of
energetic literature. Among other resolves, I determined from that day
on, if I lived till my hair whitened--lived till I raised my third or
fourth crop of teeth, never, _never_, to give Randolph Chance another
thought. There was one comfort: he did not know, nor did any one else,
what a complete goose I had made of myself; but, though I _had_ been
most foolish, thanks to a sober, Puritanic ancestry, I still had myself
in hand; my hysterics had been occasional and secluded, and I was not
wholly gone daft. I could recover; I would! and then, if ever he came to
my feet, he would learn that some things don't rise, after once they are
cold.

I was calm enough when he at last decided to go, and instead of running
on excitedly, as I had been vaguely