ia leather and tipped with gold,
she handed it to Bessie, who ran her eye down the page: it was open at
September 28th.

"Read it," said Fanny, settling herself composedly in her shawl, and
leaning back against a tree with half-shut eyes.

"'_September 28th_'" Bessie read, in clear tones which had a strange
constraint in them, "'Charlie Munro saved my life. I shall love him
for ever and ever. We were out in a boat, we two, on the
Hudson--moonlight--I was rowing. Dropt my oar into the water. Leaned
out after it and upset the boat. Charlie caught me and swam with me to
shore.'"

A dead silence as Bessie closed the book and held it in her hand.

"Oh," said I lightly, "that isn't worth chronicling--that! It was no
question of saving lives. The New York boat was coming up, if I
remember."

"Yes, it was in trying to steer away from it that I dropped my oar."

"So you see it would have picked us up, any how. There was nothing but
the ducking to remember."

"Such a figure, Bessie! Imagine us running along the road to the gate!
I could scarcely move for my dripping skirts; and we frightened papa
so when we stepped up on the piazza out of the moonlight!"

To stop this torrent of reminiscences, which, though of nothings, I
could see was bringing the red spot to Bessie's cheek, I put out my
hand for the book: "Let me write something down to-day;" and I hastily
scribbled: "_September_ 28. Charles Munro and Bessie Stewart, to sail
for Europe in ten days, ask of their friend Fanny Meyrick her warm
congratulations."

"Will that do?" I whispered as I handed the book to Bessie.

"Not at all," said Bessie scornfully and coldly, tearing out the leaf
as she spoke and crumpling it in her hand.--"Sorry to spoil your book,
Fanny dear, but the sentiment would have spoiled it more. Let us go
home."

As we passed the hotel on that dreary walk home, Fanny would have left
us, but Bessie clung to her and whispered something in a pleading
voice, begging her, evidently, to come home with us.

"If Mr. Munro will take word to papa," she said, indicating that
worthy, who sat on the upper piazza smoking his pipe.

"We will walk on," said Bessie coldly. "Come, Fanny dear."

Strange, thought I as I turned on my heel, this sudden fond intimacy!
Bessie is angry. Why did I never tell her of the ducking? And yet when
I remembered how Fanny had clung to me, how after we had reached the
shore I had been forced to remind her that it was no time f