c lips opened not to such numbers. Salsbury gazed long and
earnestly, and finally gave vent to his emotion, indicating, with the
amber tip of his cigar-tube, the setter that slept in the sunshine at
his feet.

"Shocking place, this, for dogs!"--I regret to say he pronounced it
"dawgs"--"Why, Carlo is as fat--as fat as--as a--"

His mind was unequal to a simile even, and he terminated the sentence
in a murmur.

More silence; more smoke; more profound meditation. Directly Charley
Burnham looked around with some show of vitality.

"There comes the stage," said he.

The driver's bugle rang merrily among the drifted sand-hills that lay
warm and glowing in the orange light of the setting sun. The young men
leaned forward over the piazza-rail and scrutinized the occupants of the
vehicle as it appeared.

"Old gentleman and lady, aw, and two children," said Ned Salsbury; "I
hoped there would be some nice girls."

This, in a voice of ineffable tenderness and poetry, but with that odd,
tired little drawl, so epidemic in some of our universities.

"Look there, by Jove!" cried Charley, with a real interest at last; "now
that's what I call a regular thing!"

The "regular thing" was a low, four-wheeled pony-chaise of basket-work,
drawn by two jolly little fat ponies, black and shiny as vulcanite,
which jogged rapidly in, just far enough behind the stage to avoid its
dust.

This vehicle was driven by a young lady of decided beauty, with a spice
of Amazonian spirit. She was rather slender and very straight, with a
jaunty little hat and feather perched coquettishly above her dark brown
hair, which was arranged in one heavy mass and confined in a silken net.
Her complexion was clear, without brilliancy; her eyes blue as the
ocean horizon, and spanned by sharp, characteristic brows; her mouth
small and decisive; and her whole cast of features indicative of quick
talent and independence.

Upon the seat beside her sat another damsel, leaning indolently back in
the corner of the carriage. This one was a little fairer than the first,
having one of those beautiful English complexions of mingled rose and
snow, and a dash of gold-dust in her hair where the sun touched it. Her
eyes, however, were dark hazel and full of fire, shaded and intensified
by their long, sweeping lashes. Her mouth was a rosebud, and her chin
and throat faultless in the delicious curve of their lines. In a word,
she was somewhat of the Venus-di-Milo type; her