wn?" echoed Mr. Dinks.

"Town?" murmured Mr. Wetherley.

"Town," said Miss Waring, with her eyes sparkling.

"Where did you come from? I thought you were all at Saratoga," she
continued.

"It's stupid there," said Mr. Beacon.

"Quite stupid," echoed Mr. Dinks.

"Stupid," murmured Mr. Wetherley.

"Stupid?" asked the lady, this time making the interrogation in the
antistrophe of the chant.

"We wanted a little fun."

"A little fun."

"Fun," replied the gentlemen.

"Well, I'm going about my business," said she. "Good-morning."

"About your business?"

"Your business?"

"Business?" murmured the youths, in order. Zephyr concluding.

"Business!" said Miss Amy, bursting into a little laugh, in which the
listless, perfectly good-humored youths cheerfully joined.

"It's dreadful hot," said Mr. Beacon.

"Oh! horrid!" said Mr. Dinks.

"Very," said Zephyr. And the gentlemen wiped their foreheads.

"Coming to Saratoga, Miss Waring?" they asked.

"Hardly, I think, but possibly," said she, and moved away, with her
little basket; while the gentlemen, swearing at the heat, the dust, and
the smells, sauntered on, asseverated that Amy Waring was an odd sort of
girl; and finally went in to the Washington Hotel, where each lolled back
in an armchair, with the white duck legs reposing in another--excepting
Mr. Dinks, who poised his boots upon the window-sill that commanded
Broadway; and so, comforted with a cigar in the mouth, and a glass of
iced port-wine sangaree in the hand, the three young gentlemen labored
through the hot hours until dinner.

Amy Waring walked quite as rapidly as the heat would permit. She crossed
the Park, and, striking into Fulton Street, continued toward the river,
but turned into Water Street. The old peach-women at the corners, sitting
under huge cotton umbrellas, and parching in the heat, saw the lovely
face going by, and marked the peculiarly earnest step, which the sitters
in the streets, and consequent sharp students of faces and feet, easily
enough recognized as the step of one who was bound upon some especial
errand. Clerks looked idly at her from open shop doors, and from windows
above; and when she entered the marine region of Water Street, the heavy
stores and large houses, which here and there were covered with a dull
grime, as if the squalor within had exuded through the dingy red bricks,
seemed to glare at her unkindly, and sullenly ask why youth, and beauty,
and cleanly mode