ty-tone,
after she had returned his greeting, and perpetrated a polite fiction,
by declaring that she remembered him perfectly, for he was the image of
his father.

Mr. Leavenworth brought the heels of his varnished boots together with a
click, and executed the latest bow imported, then stuck his glass in his
eye and stared till it fell out, (the glass, not the eye,) upon which he
fell into step with them, remarking,--

"I shall be most happy to show the lions: they are deused tame ones, so
you needn't be alarmed, Miss Wilder."

Debby was good-natured enough to laugh; and, elated with that success,
he proceeded to pour forth his stores of wit and learning in true
collegian style, quite unconscious that the "jolly little thing" was
looking him through and through with the smiling eyes that were
producing such pleasurable sensations under the mosaic studs. They
strolled toward the beach, and, meeting an old acquaintance, Aunt Pen
fell behind, and beamed upon the young pair as if her prophetic eye even
at this early stage beheld them walking altarward in a proper state of
blond white vest and bridal awkwardness.

"Can you skip a stone, Mr. Leavenworth?" asked Debby, possessed with a
mischievous desire to shock the piece of elegance at her side.

"Eh? what's that?" he inquired, with his head on one side, like an
inquisitive robin.

Debby repeated her question, and illustrated it by sending a stone
skimming over the water in the most scientific manner. Mr. Joe was
painfully aware that this was not at all "the thing," that his sisters
never did so, and that Seguin would laugh confoundedly, if he caught him
at it; but Debby looked so irresistibly fresh and pretty under her
rose-lined parasol that he was moved to confess that he _had_ done such
a thing, and to sacrifice his gloves by poking in the sand, that he
might indulge in a like unfashionable pastime.

"You'll be at the hop tonight, I hope, Miss Wilder," he observed,
introducing a topic suited to a young lady's mental capacity.

"Yes, indeed; for dancing is one of the joys of my life, next to husking
and making hay"; and Debby polked a few steps along the beach, much to
the edification of a pair of old gentlemen, serenely taking their first
"constitutional."

"Making what?" cried Mr. Joe, polking after her.

"Hay; ah, that is the pleasantest fun in the world,--and better
exercise, my mother says, for soul and body, than dancing till dawn in
crowded rooms, wit