proceed against your son for breach of promise of marriage,
laying her damages at twelve hundred dollars. As your son is
not legally of age, we shall hold you responsible. A
compromise, to avoid publicity of suit, is possible. Send
us your check for $1,000 and you will hear no more of this
matter.

"Respectfully,

"WILLIAM BLACK, Attorney-at-Law,

"_Pennyville, N. Y._"

"Oh, father!" I cried, "I swear to you this is not my fault!" Looking
up in distress I saw that my parent was laughing.

"I have heard of Alvira before," said he; "no, it is _not_ your fault,
my poor boy. Let me see, Alvira was thirty twenty-one years ago when I
was married to your ma. I used to be in Pennyville sometimes, in those
days, and she was sweet on me, John, then. I'll answer this letter,
and answer it to her, and not her lawyer. Don't you be uneasy, my son.
I'll tend to her. But you had a narrow escape; I don't wonder you,
with your bashfulness, fled homeward to your ma."

"Then it wasn't my blunder this time, father?"

"I exonerate you, my son!"

For once a glow of happiness diffused itself over my much-tried
spirits. I was so exalted that when a young lady came in for a bottle
of bandoline I gave her Spaulding's prepared glue instead; and the
next time I met that young lady she wore a bang--she had used the
new-fangled bandoline, and the only way to get the stuff out of her
hair was to cut it off.

CHAPTER VIII.

HE ENACTS THE PART OF GROOMSMAN.

"Out of the frying-pan into the fire!" This should have been my chosen
motto from the beginning. The performance of the maddening feat
indicated in the proverb has been the principal business of my life. I
am always finding myself in the frying-pan, and always flopping out
into the fire. My father's interference saved me from the dreadful old
creature into whose net I had stumbled when I fled from my native
village, only to return with the certainty that I was unfit to cope
with the world outside of it.

"I will never put my foot beyond the township line again," I vowed to
my secret soul. I had a harrowing sorrow preying upon me all the
remainder of the winter. I was given to understand that Belle Marigold
was actually engaged to Fred Hencoop. And she might have been mine!
Alas, that mighty _might_!

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are these--'It might have been!'"

I am positive that when I first came home from school she