to share in. Why it is that my Aunt
no longer wishes to know either the boy or the girl, or even to hear
their names mentioned, you shall learn at the end, when I have finished
with the wedding; for this happy story of love ends with a wedding,
and begins in the Woman's Exchange, which the ladies of Kings Port have
established, and (I trust) lucratively conduct, in Royal Street.

Royal Street! There's a relevance in this name, a fitness to my errand;
but that is pure accident.

The Woman's Exchange happened to be there, a decorous resort for those
who became hungry, as I did, at the hour of noon each day. In my very
pleasant boarding-house, where, to be sure, there was one dreadful
boarder, a tall lady, whom I soon secretly called Juno--but let
unpleasant things wait--in the very pleasant house where I boarded (I
had left my hotel after one night) our breakfast was at eight, and our
dinner not until three: sacred meal hours in Kings Port, as inviolable,
I fancy, as the Declaration of Independence, but a gap quite beyond the
stretch of my Northern vitals. Therefore, at twelve, it was my habit to
leave my Fanning researches for a while, and lunch at the Exchange upon
chocolate and sandwiches most delicate in savor. As, one day, I was
luxuriously biting one of these, I heard his voice and what he was
saying. Both the voice and the interesting order he was giving caused
me, at my small table, in the dim back of the room, to stop and watch
him where he stood in the light at the counter to the right of the
entrance door. Young he was, very young, twenty-two or three at the
most, and as he stood, with hat in hand, speaking to the pretty girl
behind the counter, his head and side-face were of a romantic and
high-strung look. It was a cake that he desired made, a cake for a
wedding; and I directly found myself curious to know whose wedding. Even
a dull wedding interests me more than other dull events, because it
can arouse so much surmise and so much prophecy; but in this wedding
I instantly, because of his strange and winning embarrassment, became
quite absorbed. How came it he was ordering the cake for it? Blushing
like the boy that he was entirely, he spoke in a most engaging voice:
"No, not charged; and as you don't know me, I had better pay for it
now."

Self-possession in his speech he almost had; but the blood in his cheeks
and forehead was beyond his control.

A reply came from behind the counter: "We don't expect pa