wooing their mates. Her nearest acquaintance with
lovers was old Peter's rendering of Romeo or Othello. She remembered
them well enough as her eye furtively ran over the jaunty little
figure beside her. "Is his hose ungartered, his beard neglected, his
shoe untied?" she thought. "Pshaw! he is not Orlando, any more than I
am Rosalind." Her mother had been mistaken, that was all: she let the
matter slip easily past her. There was a certain tough common sense in
Catharine that summarily sent mistakes and sentimental fancies to the
right about.

Mr. Muller, finding the words he wished to speak would not come at
once, and ashamed of jogging on in silence, began to overflow with
the ordinary ideas of which he was full. They passed the grape-packing
house. "Eight thousand boxes despatched last season, Catharine! And
there is the Freedmen's Agency. Three teachers supported, five hundred
primers furnished to Virginia alone since January, and I really forget
the number of Bibles. But the world moves: yes indeed. And I think
sometimes Berrytown moves in the van."

"I've no doubt of that," said Kitty politely. "Dear me! Five hundred
spelling-books!" But she felt humiliated. She had neither picked
grapes nor taught freedmen. What thin wisps of hair these women had
stopping to speak to Mr. Muller! She put her hand suddenly to the back
of her head.

"Those are employees in the canning-house," he said as they passed on.
"One is educating herself as a short-hand reporter, and the other has
a lecture ready for next winter on Shakespeare's Women."

"What admirable persons they must be! Ah! now I have it right!"
setting her hat higher on the light chestnut coils. Mr. Muller looked,
and his eye rested there. She knew that, though the back of her head
was toward him. But lover? Nonsense! He meant no doubt to propose that
she should go into the typesetting business or stenography.

Now, to tell Kitty's secret, she had had her love-affair her mother
knew nothing about, which made her purblind in this matter. It was
this: There was a certain cave (originally a spring-house) behind
the walnut trees, quite covered over with trumpet-vines and
partridge-berries. She had a bench there, from which she could see
only the shady old house and the sun going down. When she was a child
of about eight, alone all day long, year in and out, she had taken
down this bench, and working stealthily and blushing terribly, had
made it large enough for two. She