happiness was in a desperate situation. It was
farther away at the moment of Dickie Blue's sullen entrance than ever
it had been since first she flushed and shone with the vision of its
glorious approach.

Ay--thought the perverse Dickie Blue when he clapped eyes on the fresh
gingham in which Peggy Lacey was fluttering over the kitchen floor (he
would not deign to look in her gray eyes), the maid might have her
letter an' her ring an' wed whom she pleased; an' as for tears at the
weddin', they'd not fall from the eyes o' Dickie Blue, who would by
that time, ecod, perhaps have consummated an affair with a maid of
consequence from Grace Harbor! Ha! There were indeed others! The
charms of the intellect were not negligible. They were to be taken
into account in the estimate. And Dickie Blue would consider the maid
from Grace Harbor.

"She've dignity," thought he, "an' she've learn-in'. Moreover, she've
high connections in St. John's an' a wonderful complexion."

Dickie meant it. Ay. And many a man, and many a poor maid, too, as
everybody knows, has cast happiness to waste in a mood of that mad
description. And so a tragedy impended.

"Is it you, Dick?" says Peggy Lacey.

Dickie nodded and scowled.

"'Tis I. Was you lookin' for somebody else t' call?"

"No, Dickie."

It was almost an interrogation. Peggy Lacey was puzzled. Dickie Blue's
gloomy concern was out of the way.

"Well," said Dicky, "I'm sorry."

"An' why?"

"Well," Dickie declared, "if you was expectin' anybody else t' come t'
see you, I'd be glad t' have un do so. 'Tis a dismal evenin' for you
t' spend alone."

Almost, then, Peggy Lacey's resolution failed her. Almost she
protested that she would have a welcome for no other man in the world.
Instead she turned arch.

"Did you bring the mail?" she inquired.

"I did."

"Was there nothin' for me?"

"There was."

"A letter!"

"Ay."

Peggy Lacey trembled. Confronting, thus intimately, the enormity she
proposed, she was shocked. She concealed her agitation, however, and
laid strong hands upon her wicked resolution to restrain its flight.

"Nothin' else?" said she.

"Ay; there was more."

"Not a small packet!"

"Ay; there was a small packet. I 'low you been expectin' some such
gift as that, isn't you?"

"A gift! Is it from St. John's?"

"Ay."

"Then I been expectin' it," Peggy eagerly admitted. "Where is it,
Dickie? I'm in haste to pry into that packet."

The letter and the packag