le and a galop; but no more--so so! so so!--"--It was pretty
well on in the night when Hans approached the Parsonage. He had seen the
ladies of the Doctor's party home, and was now making up the accounts of
the day as he went along.

"She's a little shy; but on the whole I don't dislike that."

When he left the road at the Parsonage garden, he said, "She's
dreadfully shy--almost more than I care for."

But as he crossed the farm-yard, he vowed that coy and capricious girls
were the most intolerable creatures he knew. The thing was that he did
not feel at all satisfied with the upshot of the day. Not that he for a
moment doubted that she loved him; but, just on that account, he thought
her coldness and reserve doubly annoying. She had never once thrown the
ring to him; she had never once singled him out in the cotillion; and on
the way home she had talked to every one but him. But he would adopt a
different policy the next time; she should soon come to repent that day.

He slipped quietly into the house, so that his uncle might not hear how
late he was. In order to reach his own and his brother's bedroom he had
to pass through a long attic. A window in this attic was used by the
young men as a door through which to reach a sort of balcony, formed by
the canopy over the steps leading into the garden.

Cousin Hans noticed that this window was standing open; and out upon the
balcony, in the clear moonlight, he saw his brother's figure.

Ola still wore his white dancing-gloves; he held on to the railing with
both hands, and stared the moon straight in the face.

Cousin Hans could not understand what his brother was doing out there
at that time of night; and least of all could he understand what had
induced him to put a flower-pot on his head.

"He must be drunk," thought Hans, approaching him warily.

Then he heard his brother muttering something about a quadrille and a
galop; after which he began to make some strange motions with his hands.

Cousin Hans received the impression that he was trying to snap his
fingers; and presently Ola said, slowly, and clearly, in his
monotonous and unsympathetic speaking voice: "Hope's clad in April
green--trommelommelom, trommelommelom;" you see, poor fellow, he could
not sing.

AT THE FAIR.

It was by the merest chance that Monsieur and Madame Tousseau came to
Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the early days of September.

Four weeks ago they had been married in Lyons, which wa