ss. "Where have you been, Mr.
Jerningham?"

"Only in the orchard--reading."

"And you've missed May!"

"Missed Miss May? How do you mean? I had a long talk with her this
morning--a most interesting talk."

"But you weren't here to say goodby. Now, you don't mean to say that
you forgot that she was leaving by the two o'clock train? What a man
you are!"

"Dear me! To think of my forgetting it!" said the philosopher
shamefacedly.

"She told me to say good-by to you for her."

"She's very kind. I can't forgive myself."

His hostess looked at him for a moment; then she sighed, and smiled,
and sighed again.

"Have you everything you want?" she asked.

"Everything, thank you," said he, sitting down opposite the cheese, and
propping his book (he thought he would just run through the last
chapter again) against the loaf; "everything in the world that I want,
thanks."

His hostess did not tell him that the girl had come in from the apple
orchard, and run hastily upstairs lest her friend should see what her
friend did see in her eyes. So that he had no suspicion at all that he
had received an offer of marriage--and refused it. And he did not
refer to anything of that sort when he paused once in his reading and
exclaimed:

"I'm really sorry I missed Miss May. That was an interesting case of
hers. But I gave the right answer. The girl ought to marry A."

And so the girl did.

VII.

MARRIAGE BY COMPULSION.

"It is a most anxious thing to be an absolute ruler," said Duke
Deodonato, "but I have made up my mind. The Doctor has convinced me
[here Dr. Fusbius, Ph. D., bowed very low] that marriage is the best,
noblest, wholesomest, and happiest of human conditions."

"Your Highness will remember----" began the President of the Council.

"My lord, I have made up my mind," said Duke Deodonato.

Thus speaking, the Duke took a large sheet of foolscap paper, and wrote
rapidly for a moment or two.

"There," he said, pushing the paper over to the President, "is the
decree."

"The decree, sir?"

"I think three weeks afford ample space," said Duke Deodonato.

"Three weeks, sir?"

"For every man over twenty-one years of age in this Duchy to find
himself a wife."

"Your Highness," observed Dr. Fusbius, with deference, "will consider
that between an abstract proposition and a practical measure----"

"There is to the logical mind no stopping place," interrupted Duke
Deodonato.

"But, sir," cried