ong your old friends," Mrs.
Skerrett said, "ever since Peter told me you were one of his models."

She delivered this little speech with a caressing manner which totally
fascinated Wade.

Nothing was ever so absolutely pretty as Mrs. Peter Skerrett. Her
complete prettiness left nothing to be desired.

"Never," thought Wade, "did I see such a compact little casket of
perfections. Every feature is thoroughly well done and none intrusively
superior. Her little nose is a combination of all the amiabilities. Her
black eyes sparkle with fun and mischief and wit, all playing over deep
tenderness below. Her hair ripples itself full of gleams and shadows.
The same coquetry of Nature that rippled her hair has dinted her cheeks
with shifting dimples. Every time she smiles--and she smiles as if sixty
an hour were not half allowance--a dimple slides into view and vanishes
like a dot in a flow of sunny water. And, O Peter Skerrett! if you were
not the best fellow in the world, I should envy you that latent kiss of
a mouth."

"You need not say it, Wade,--your broken head exempts you from the
business of compliments," said Peter; "but I see you think my wife
perfection. You'll think so the more, the more you know her."

"Stop, Peter," said she, "or I shall have to hide behind the superior
charms of Mary Damer."

Miss Damer certainly was a woman of a grander order. You might pull at
the bells or knock at the knockers and be introduced into the boudoirs
of all the houses, villas, seats, chateaus, and palaces in Christendom
without seeing such another. She belonged distinctly to the Northern
races,--the "brave and true and tender" women. There was, indeed, a
trace of hauteur and imperiousness in her look and manner; but it
did not ill become her distinguished figure and face. Wade, however,
remembered her sweet earnestness when she was playing leech to his
wound, and chose to take that mood as her dominant one.

"She must have been desperately annoyed with bores and boobies," he
thought. "I do not wonder she protects herself by distance. I am afraid
I shall never get within her lines again,--not even if I should try
slow and regular approaches, and bombard her with bouquets for a
twelvemonth."

"But, Wade," says Peter, "all this time you have not told us what good
luck sends you here to be wrecked on the hospitable shores of my Point."

"I live here. I am chief cook and confectioner where you see the smoking
top of that tall ch