ing again, and the only result of
his excursion was a more splendid red on the maples, a more glowing
russet on the oaks. Indian summer reigned in his stead, flinging
broadcast her gorgeous colors and her melting mellowness. That men might
not surfeit of her sweets, she tempered her daytime prodigality of heat
by nights of frost. People were coming back to town, a few, very few, in
velvet gowns, but mostly in rags and anxious about their autumn
wardrobes; and yet these were days to make one long, as one does in
spring, for the smell of the good brown earth and the sniff of untainted
country air. The atmosphere was full of glowing warmth that penetrated
to the heart and made every face on the street reflect some of its
delight; for autumn with her thousand charms and witcheries was proving
that she died, not from gray old age, but in the fullness of her prime.

Madeline Elton, therefore, wished herself back again with the fallen
maple leaves and the pines that held their own; and Mrs. Lenox was
fitting temptation to desire as the two hobnobbed over cups of tea in
easy friendliness. When Dick Percival appeared, Mrs. Lenox saw the way
to make her bait irresistible.

"Dick," she cried, "just the man! Don't you pine for sunshine in your
nostrils instead of city smoke? Doesn't the thought of winter coming,
cold and long, make you appreciate these last heavenly gleams? Do you
remember what a delicious week you and Mr. Norris and Madeline spent
with me a year ago?"

"Yes, to everything," said Dick. "All of which means--what? No cream,
please, Madeline."

"All of which means," answered the lady, "that Mr. Lenox and I are wise
in our generation and do not fly to the city when the first birds go
south; that I want Madeline to come and pay me a visit; that, as a kind
of sugar-plum, a chromo, if you please, to induce her to buy my wares, I
propose that you and Mr. Norris should join us on the Sunday of next
week. What do you say?"

"May the Lord prosper you, and I'll do my part as an attraction," Dick
replied heartily. "But I choose to be a sugar-plum rather than a chromo,
especially if Madeline is going to eat me."

"I didn't need any additional inducement, Mrs. Lenox," said Madeline.
"Yourselves and all out-doors are surely sufficient. It will be good to
get away from the grime. Now what bee have you in your bonnet, Dick?"
For a new look had come into his face as she spoke.

Percival had been glancing around the cheerful c