he rather admired
her for it; and he would have been ready to go back half an hour later
and accept pardon and be on the footing of last summer again. Even now he
debated with himself whether it was too late to call; but, decidedly, a
quarter to ten seemed late. The next day he determined never to call upon
the Leightons again; but he had no reason for this; it merely came into a
transitory scheme of conduct, of retirement from the society of women
altogether; and after dinner he went round to see them.

He asked for the ladies, and they all three received him, Alma not
without a surprise that intimated itself to him, and her mother with no
appreciable relenting; Miss Woodburn, with the needlework which she found
easier to be voluble over than a book, expressed in her welcome a
neutrality both cordial to Beaton and loyal to Alma.

"Is it snowing outdo's?" she asked, briskly, after the greetings were
transacted. "Mah goodness!" she said, in answer to his apparent surprise
at the question. "Ah mahght as well have stayed in the Soath, for all the
winter Ah have seen in New York yet."

"We don't often have snow much before New-Year's," said Beaton.

"Miss Woodburn is wild for a real Northern winter," Mrs. Leighton
explained.

"The othah naght Ah woke up and looked oat of the window and saw all the
roofs covered with snow, and it turned oat to be nothing but moonlaght.
Ah was never so disappointed in mah lahfe," said Miss Woodburn.

"If you'll come to St. Barnaby next summer, you shall have all the winter
you want," said Alma.

"I can't let you slander St. Barnaby in that way," said Beaton, with the
air of wishing to be understood as meaning more than he said.

"Yes?" returned Alma, coolly. "I didn't know you were so fond of the
climate."

"I never think of it as a climate. It's a landscape. It doesn't matter
whether it's hot or cold."

"With the thermometer twenty below, you'd find that it mattered," Alma
persisted.

"Is that the way you feel about St. Barnaby, too, Mrs. Leighton?" Beaton
asked, with affected desolation.

"I shall be glad enough to go back in the summer," Mrs. Leighton
conceded.

"And I should be glad to go now," said Beaton, looking at Alma. He had
the dummy of 'Every Other Week' in his hand, and he saw Alma's eyes
wandering toward it whenever he glanced at her. "I should be glad to go
anywhere to get out of a job I've undertaken," he continued, to Mrs.
Leighton. "They're going to start s