into anything like sentiment.

"I have never built so many castles in my life as since I've known you,
Miss Schuyler," he said.

"Oh," I answered as lightly as I could, "air-castles don't count."

"The building of air-castles is an innocent amusement enough, I suppose,"
he said, "but I'm committing the folly of living in mine. I"--

Then I was frightened. When, all at once, you find you have something
precious you only dimly suspected was to be yours, you almost wish it
hadn't come so soon. But just at that moment Mrs. Benedict called to us,
and came tramping back from the gate, and hooked her supercilious,
patronizing arm in Mr. Copley's, and asked him into the sitting-room to
talk over the "lady chapel" in her new memorial church. Then aunt Celia
told me they would excuse me, as I had had a wearisome day; and there was
nothing for me to do but to go to bed, like a snubbed child, and wonder
if I should ever know the end of that sentence. And I listened at the
head of the stairs, shivering, but all that I could hear was that Mrs.
Benedict asked Mr. Copley to be her own architect. Her architect indeed!
That woman ought not to be at large!

DURHAM, _July_ 15
At Farmer Hendry's.

We left York this morning, and arrived here about eleven o'clock. It
seems there is some sort of an election going on in the town, and there
was not a single fly at the station. Mr. Copley walked about in every
direction, but neither horse nor vehicle was to be had for love nor
money. At last we started to walk to the village, Mr. Copley so laden
with our hand-luggage that he resembled a pack-mule. We made a tour of
the inns, but not a single room was to be had, not for that night nor for
three days ahead, on account of that same election.

"Hadn't we better go on to Edinburgh, aunt Celia?" I asked.

"Edinburgh? Never!" she replied. "Do you suppose that I would
voluntarily spend a Sunday in those bare Presbyterian churches until the
memory of these past ideal weeks has faded a little from my memory?
What, leave out Durham and spoil the set?" (She spoke of the cathedrals
as if they were souvenir spoons.) "I intended to stay here for a week or
more, and write up a record of our entire trip from Winchester while the
impressions were fresh in my mind."

"And I had intended doing the same thing," said Mr. Copley. "That