ttracted, now, by means of sundry hems and haws.

"Miss 'Lethe, just a moment," he said softly. She paused and then went
up to him. He held out a newspaper, suddenly at a loss for words, now
that there was a prospect of a moment with her wholly uninterrupted.
"Here," said he, a little panicky, "is a full account of the revival,
sermon and all. Make your hair stand on end to read it."

She took the paper, undeceived by his small subterfuge to gain
attention, but interested, as she always was in such things, in the
account of the revival. "This really is interesting." She sat down on
the bench, as they reached the stable-yard again, and pored above the
newspaper.

In the meantime the Colonel tried to screw his courage to the sticking
point. "Colonel Sandusky Doolittle," he adjured himself, "if you don't
say it now, then you forever hold your peace, that's all!" He went to
his buggy, which had been brought to the stable yard, and from
underneath its seat took a box containing a bouquet of sweet,
old-fashioned flowers. Miss Alathea, absorbed in the account of the
revival, did not notice him at all. "This will do the business," he
reflected. "Now, Sandusky Doolittle, keep cool, keep cool!" Nervously,
as he gazed at her, his fingers worked among the flowers, dismembering
them unconsciously. "A Kentucky Colonel," he was saying to himself in
scorn, "afraid of a woman!" His fingers tore the flowers with new
activity as his nervousness increased, making sad work with the
magnificent bouquet. "Of course she is an angel," he reflected, and
then, with a grim humor, "or will be before I ask her, if I wait another
twenty years! But I shall ask her, I shall ask her!" He stepped toward
her boldly, but paused before her in a wordless panic when he had
approached within a yard. "Heavens!" he thought. "My heart is going at a
one-forty gait and the jockey's lost the reins. I'll be over the fence
in another minute if I don't hold tight! But I have got to do it, this
time." He dropped the stems of the flowers, still bound together by
their lengths of wide white ribbon, into the elaborate box from which,
so lately, he had taken them in their uninjured beauty, not noting the
sad wreck which his too nervous fingers had produced, put on the cover
and approached still nearer. With the box held toward her bashfully, he
managed, then, another step or two. "Miss 'Lethe," he said stammering,
"lawn party to-night--bouquet for you--brought it from Lex