ot mean
things in female estimation. With all these, why not have a little
mercy for the poor curate's sister, reduced to enter the lists with very
uncouth weapons?"

"You won't deny that Ellen loves you?" said he, suddenly.

"I 'd be sorry, very sorry, to doubt it; but she never said I was a
coquette?"

"I 'm sure she knows you are," said he, doggedly.

"Oh, Jack, I hope this is not the way you try people on court-martial?"

"It's the fairest way ever a fellow was tried; and if one does n't
feel him guilty he 'd never condemn him."

"I 'd rather people would feel less, and think a little more, if I was
to be 'the accused,'" said she, half pettishly.

"You got that, Master Jack; that round shot was for _you_," said he, not
without some irritation in his tone.

"Well," said she, good-humoredly, "I believe we are firing into each
other this morning, and I declare I cannot see for what."

"I 'll tell you, Julia. You grew very cross with me, because I accused
you of being a coquette, a charge you 'd have thought pretty lightly of
if you had n't known it was deserved."

"Might there not have been another reason for the crossness, supposing
it to have existed?" said she, quietly.

"I 'cannot imagine one; at least, I can't imagine what reason you point
at."

"Simply this," said she, half carelessly, "that it could have been no
part of your duty to have told me so."

"You mean that it was a great liberty on my part--an unwarrantable
liberty?"

"Something like it."

"That the terms which existed between us"--and now he spoke with a
tremulous voice, and a look of much agitation--"could not have warranted
my daring to point out a fault, even in your manner; for I am sure,
after all, your nature had nothing to do with it?"

She nodded, and was silent.

"That's pretty plain, anyhow," said he, moving towards the table, where
he had placed his hat. "It's a sharp lesson to give a fellow though, all
the more when he was unprepared for it."

"You forget that the first sharp lesson came from _you_."

"All true; there 's no denying it." He took up his hat as she spoke,
and moved, half awkwardly, towards the window. "I had a message for you
from the girls, if I could only remember it. Do you happen to guess what
it was about?"

She shrugged her shoulders slightly as a negative, and was silent.

"I 'll be shot if I can think what it was," muttered he; "the chances
are, however, it was to ask you to do something or