r that you are not, for your dullness surpasses
belief. Do you imagine Dorothy doesn't see you every time you walk this
street? that she hasn't seen you to-day? that she didn't see you come
in? that she won't invent some pretext for running over? Oh, foolish,
foolish bridegroom! You may guess how foolish by peeping from the
window, for here your Dorothy comes."

At this, the benignant Bess, having questioned, advised, admonished,
and, in a measure, berated Richard, gave him her hand, as if she would
give him courage; and Richard, with the praiseworthy purpose of getting
all the courage he could, lifted it to his lips. That was the blasting
tableau at the moment Dorothy stood in the door.

"Oh!" cried Dorothy. Then her brow crimsoned, and her eyes began to
shine like angry stars.

CHAPTER IX

HOW STORRI MADE AN OFFER OF HIS LOVE

At the brow of red and those angry eyes like stars, Bess smiled
superior, in beaming toleration and affection. Bess could afford these
benevolences, being now engaged in that most delightful of all Christian
tasks to a woman, viz., superintending the love-romance of another
woman. She swept sweetly down on Dorothy; and even Richard, albeit full
to blindness of his own great passion, could not help but see that she
was as graceful as a goddess.

Bess placed a hand on each of Dorothy's shoulders, and kissed her brow
where the angry red, already in doubt as to the propriety of its
presence, was trying to steal away unnoticed.

"What have I done?" said Bess, as though repeating a query put by
Dorothy. "Now I no more than found a wanderer, who loves you almost as
dearly as you love him, and who would not see the way to go straight to
you with his offer of a heart. He was for traveling miles and miles
around, no one knows how many, by all kinds of hesitating roads. I
stopped him and pointed cross-lots to you. That is my whole offense; and
when you arrived, the wanderer, in a spirit of gratitude I entirely
commend, was very properly mumbling over my hands."

Bess drew Dorothy into the room.

"There!" cried she, "I have done my utmost best for both. I shall now
look after Mr. Fopling. Poor child, he has already been neglected too
long!"

Bess, departing, left behind her two young people wondrously
embarrassed. Richard had been plunged into a most craven condition;
while Dorothy, head drooping like a flower gone to sleep, the flush
creeping from her brow to her cheek, began to cry ge