of us spoke another word
during the drive.

I did not enjoy that party. I was angry at Mr. Summers, and I let him
see it; but I had no patience with any other man in the room. In driving
back, Mr. Summers 'thought that he would sit outside, to get a little
fresh air,'--which, as the thermometer stood at twenty, must have been
exhilarating. I was handed out in silence, and went to bed in as bad a
humor as that in which many a belle comes from the ball room.

There was a coolness between us for several days, which gradually thawed
into a more genial state of things, but it did not seem to me that it
ever became quite as it was before.

All winter there were rumblings deep and continual in the political
sky--sometimes the sun broke out, and people said that it was going to
clear; but usually the weathercocks predicted a long, southerly storm. I
never saw a man so full of prophecy as Mr. Bull. One would have supposed
that every hour brought him telegraphic despatches both from the real
and the spurious Congress; and that President Lincoln and Jeff. Davis
were both convinced of their utter inability to take any steps without
the cognizance and approval of Mr. Bull.

Mrs. Bull said mildly that 'she hoped it would blow over;' but Mr. Bull
exclaimed indignantly that 'he didn't want it to blow over--he wanted it
to blow out and done with it, if it was goin' to, and not keep a
threatenin' all to no purpose. It was high time that things was settled,
and people knew what was what. If we was goin' to hev a rumpus, he hoped
we'd _hev_ it.'

If the old man had not been really good-natured and inoffensive, I
should have taken him in hand; but these disconnected remarks appeared
to give him so much pleasure that it would have been cruel to deprive
him of it.

Helen Legram had a reverential way of speaking of Mr. Summers that
provoked me; but she told me one day, when I laughed at this, that no
one who knew his life could do otherwise. And how did _she_ 'know his
life'? He had never disclosed it to _me_--and I could not see what there
was in Helen Legram to entitle her to this confidence. They certainly
were engaged--everything went to prove it; and, if I had been at all in
love with Mr. Summers, I should have classed the feeling that pervaded
me under the head of jealousy.

Mr. Bull 'guessed that Mr. Summers and that tall gal were goin' to make
a match of it;' and, when I assented to the proposition, he added that
'she didn't _