you can think he is too amusing."

"Why, that is all you care for in a man."

"It isn't! I care for a great deal else. What do _you_ care
for?"

"I don't know, I am sure," said Elizabeth; "but I should say,
everything else."

"Well, I think people are very stupid that aren't amusing,"
said Rose.

Which proposition the ladies illustrated for another quarter
of an hour.

The gentlemen came in then, one after another, but Elizabeth
did not move from her window.

"I have something of yours in my possession, Miss Haye," said
Rufus, coming to the outside of the curtain within which she
stood.

"What?" said Elizabeth unceremoniously.

"Your father."

"What are you going to do with him?"

Rufus laughed a little; and Winthrop remarked there was
nothing like straightforward dealing to confound a manoeuvrer.

"I have a desire to put him out of my hands, into yours," said
Rufus; -- "but then, I have also a desire to make him fast
there."

"My bracelet!" said Elizabeth.

It had a likeness of Mr. Haye in cameo.

"Where did you get it?"

"Where you left it."

"Where was that?"

"On the table, at the left hand of your plate, covered by your
napkin."

Elizabeth stretched out her hand for it.

"Not so fast -- I have it in my possession, as I told you, and
I claim a reward for recovering it from its ignoble
condition."

"I shall set my own conditions then," said Elizabeth. "I will
let anybody put it on, who will do me the pleasure to explain
it first."

"Explain?" said Rufus, looking in a sort of comical doubt at
the cameo; -- "I see the features of Mr. Haye, which never need
explanation to me."

"Not in nature; but do you understand them when they look so
brown on a white ground?"

"They look very natural!" said Rufus eyeing the cameo.

"That is to say, you do not understand them?"

"Pardon me, _you_ are the person most difficult to understand."

"I don't ask that of you," said Elizabeth. "I want to know
about this cameo, for I confess I don't."

"And I confess I don't," said Rufus. "I didn't even know it
had any other name but Mr. Haye."

"What's all this?" said Rose, -- "what are you talking about
here?"

"We are talking about, we don't know what," said Rufus.

"What is it?"

"That's the question; -- nobody knows."

"_What_ is the question?"

"Who shall put on Miss Elizabeth's bracelet."

"Give it to me -- I'll do it."

"Pardon me -- there is said to be reason in the roasting of