ts presently by sundry grunts, ending finally in a
'Confound it!' given explosively and an explanation:

'Too bad, Moore! Here am I taking you home to get well in peace and
quiet, and Ellen has filled the house up with half a dozen girls, more
or less. Writes me to come home and be 'made a lion of;' as sensible as
most women!' And the grumble subsided. He broke out again shortly:
'Louise Meller--Lois Berkeley--Susy--' the other names were drowned in
the rattle of the starting train. The captain finished his letters, and
Clement Moore took up his broken dreams, but this time with a new
element.

Lois Berkeley. With the name came back a fortnight of the last
summer--perfect bright days, far-off skies filled with drifting fleets
of sunny vapor, summer green piled deep over the land, the gurgle of
falling waters, the shimmer of near grain fields, deep-hued flowers
glowing in the garden borders, all the prodigality of splendor that July
pours over the world. And floating through these memories, scarce
recognized, but giving hue and tone to them like a far-off, half-heard
strain of music--a woman's presence. By some fine, subtile harmony, such
as spirits recognize, all the summer glow and depth of color, as it came
back to him, came only as part of an exquisite clothing and setting for
a slender figure and dark face. All the dainty adaptations of nature
were but an expression, in a rude, material way, for those elegances and
fitnesses which surrounded her, and which were as natural to her very
existence as to the birds and flowers. Only a fortnight, and in that
fortnight every look and word of hers, every detail of dress, even to
the texture of the garments she wore, were indelibly fixed in his
memory. She was so daintily neat in everything, nothing soiled or coarse
ever came near her. Careless, too, he thought, remembering how, coming
through the parlor in the evening dusk, he had entangled himself in the
costly crape shawl left trailing across a chair, of the gloves he had
picked up fluttering with the leaves on the veranda, and the
handkerchiefs always lying about. Perhaps Clement Moore was over
critical in his fancies about ladies' dresses, and felt that inner
perfect cleanliness and refinement worked itself out in such little
matters as the material and color and fit of garments, and all the
trifles of the toilet. A soiled or rumpled article of attire showed a
dangerous lack of something that should make up the womanly