ing spirits now rose very high, and when Claude Locker came
in with his shoes soaked from a tramp in the wet grass she greeted him
in such a way that he could scarcely believe she was the grumpy girl of
the day before. As they went into breakfast Mrs. Fox remarked to her
husband in a low voice that Miss Asher seemed to have recovered entirely
from her indisposition.

In the course of the morning Mr. Locker found an opportunity to speak in
private with Mrs. Easterfield. "I am in great trouble," he said; "I want
to marry Miss Asher."

"You show unusual promptness," said Mrs. Easterfield.

"Not at all," replied Locker. "This sort of thing is not unusual with
me. My mind is a highly sensitive plate, and receives impressions almost
instantaneously. If it were a large mind these impressions might be
placed side by side, and each one would perhaps become indelible. But it
is small, and each impression claps itself down on the one before. This
last one, however, is the strongest of them all, and obliterates
everything that went before."

"It strikes me," said Mrs. Easterfield, "that if you were to pay more
attention to your poems and less to young ladies it would be better."

"Hardly," said Mr. Locker; "for it would be worse for the poems."

The general appearance of Mr. Locker gave no reason to suppose that he
would be warranted in assuming a favorable issue from any of the
impressions to which his mind was so susceptible. He was small, rather
awkwardly set up, his head was large, and the features of his face
seemed to have no relation to each other. His nose was somewhat stubby,
and had nothing to do with his mouth or eyes. One of his eyebrows was
drawn down as if in days gone by he had been in the habit of wearing a
single glass. The other brow was raised over a clear and wide-open
light-blue eye. His mouth was large, and attended strictly to its own
business. It transmitted his odd ideas to other people, but it never
laughed at them. His chin was round and prominent, suggesting that it
might have been borrowed from somebody else. His cheeks were a little
heavy, and gave no assistance in the expression of his ideas.

His profession was that of a poet. He called himself a practical poet,
because he made a regular business of it, turning his poetic
inspirations into salable verse with the facility and success, as he
himself expressed it, of a man who makes boxes out of wood. Moreover, he
sold these poems as readily as a