tively liked her
unless they were bored by obvious wholesomeness. And although no one
ever thought of her as being particularly pretty--she was somewhat too
dumpy to be thought that--people noticed her hair, which was a most
fashionable shade of red. Then, of course, in as much as she had Mrs.
Norris for a mother, one could never be entirely sure that she might not
burst forth in some altogether unexpected and delightful manner. Her
impromptu _bataille des fleurs_, for example, was still remembered in
Woodbridge although it took place nearly sixteen years ago. Somewhere
her attention had been caught by the picture of a cherub, or possibly
seraph, perched on a cloud and pouring from a cornucopia great masses of
flowers upon the delighted earth. The idea seemed such a lovely one that
when, in the spring, her mother gave a card party out on the terrace,
she determined to give the ladies a delightful surprise. For weeks
before it she despoiled the garden, keeping her plans miraculously
secret, and storing her treasures away in a waste-basket, in lieu of the
cornucopia. And then, when the ladies were twittering away happily
beneath, she stepped out upon her porch clad only in a Liberty scarf
borrowed from her mother's wardrobe--the young creature in the picture
confined itself to a ribonny dress which floated charmingly about
it--and discharged her flowers. She was prepared for astonishment in her
audience, and her reception was all she could ask; but what she was not
prepared for was the insidious decay which had set in among the blooms,
and which robbed them entirely of their natural colour and fragrance,
transforming them into a composition recognized by polite people only
upon their lawns. It had been Mary's first encounter with the baffling
thaumaturgy of chemistry; and to the end of her days her confidence in
it was never wholly restored.

Henry Whitman at last finished his story and rose to go. The Dean, who
was a genial soul, and who, with his generous embonpoint and his
knickers, looked at present a little like Mr. Pickwick, regarded him
affectionately. He had retired from the college two years before, but
upon the President's departure for Europe on a six months' leave, he had
been called from retirement to act in his place because of the great
respect the College had for his temperate judgment, a quality at that
time particularly useful in college affairs, stirred as they were by the
contentions of the advocates o