trong for me; I
couldn't do it.

I remembered the innocent, saucy freedom with which Emmy used to treat
her John in the days of their engagement,--the little ways, half loving,
half mischievous, in which she alternately petted and domineered over
him. _Now_ she called him "Mr. Evans," with an anxious affectation of
matronly gravity. Had they been lecturing her into these conjugal
proprieties? Probably not. I felt sure, by what I now experienced in
myself, that, were I to live in that family one week, all such little
deviations from the one accepted pattern of propriety would fall off,
like many-colored sumach-leaves after the first hard frost. I began to
feel myself slowly stiffening, my courage getting gently chilly. I tried
to tell a story, but had to mangle it greatly, because I felt in the air
around me that parts of it were too vernacular and emphatic; and then,
as a man who is freezing makes desperate efforts to throw off the spell,
and finds his brain beginning to turn, so I was beginning to be slightly
insane, and was haunted with a desire to say some horribly improper or
wicked thing which should start them all out of their chairs. Though
never given to profane expressions, I perfectly hankered to let out a
certain round, unvarnished, wicked word, which I knew would create a
tremendous commotion on the surface of this enchanted mill pond,--in
fact, I was so afraid that I should make some such mad demonstration,
that I rose at an early hour and begged leave to retire. Emmy sprang up
with apparent relief, and offered to get my candle and marshal me to my
room.

When she had ushered me into the chilly hospitality of that stately
apartment, she seemed suddenly disenchanted. She set down the candle,
ran to me, fell on my neck, nestled her little head under my coat,
laughing and crying, and calling me her dear old boy; she pulled my
whiskers, pinched my ear, rummaged my pockets, danced round me in a sort
of wild joy, stunning me with a volley of questions, without stopping to
hear the answer to one of them; in short, the wild little elf of old
days seemed suddenly to come back to me, as I sat down and drew her on
to my knee.

"It does look so like home to see you, Chris!--dear, dear home!--and the
dear old folks! There never, never was such a home!--everybody there did
just what they wanted to, didn't they, Chris?--and we love each other,
don't we?"

"Emmy," said I, suddenly, and very improperly, "you aren't hap