e?"

"Well, I thought he found us just tolerable, and was interested in the
place."

Mrs. Ellison made no direct reply to this pitiable speech, but looked a
scorn which, happily for the colonel, the darkness hid. Presently she
said that bats did not express the blindness of men, for any bat could
have seen what was going on.

"Why," remarked the colonel, "I did have a momentary suspicion that day
of the Montgomery business; they both looked very confused, when I saw
them at the end of that street, and neither of them had anything to say;
but that was accounted for by what you told me afterwards about his
adventure. At the time I didn't pay much attention to the matter. The
idea of his being in love seemed too ridiculous."

"Was it ridiculous for you to be in love with me?"

"No; and yet I can't praise my condition for its wisdom, Fanny."

"Yes! that's _like_ men. As soon as one of them is safely married, he
thinks all the love-making in the world has been done forever, and he
can't conceive of two young people taking a fancy to each other."

"That's something so, Fanny. But granting--for the sake of argument
merely--that Boston has been asking Kitty to marry him, and she doesn't
know whether she wants him, what are we to do about it? _I_ don't like
him well enough to plead his cause; do you? When does Kitty think she'll
be able to make up her mind?"

"She's to let him know before we leave."

The colonel laughed. "And so he's to hang about here on uncertainties
for two whole days! That _is_ rather rough on him. Fanny, what made you
so eager for this business?"

"Eager? I _wasn't_ eager."

"Well, then,--reluctantly acquiescent?"

"Why, she's so literary and that."

"And what?"

"How insulting!--Intellectual, and so on; and I thought she would be
just fit to live in a place where everybody is literary and
intellectual. That is, I thought that, if I thought anything."

"Well," said the colonel, "you may have been right on the whole, but I
don't think Kitty is showing any particular force of mind, just now,
that would fit her to live in Boston. My opinion is, that it's
ridiculous for her to keep him in suspense. She might as well answer him
first as last. She's putting herself under a kind of obligation by her
delay. I'll talk to her--"

"If you do, you'll kill her. You don't know how she's wrought up about
it."

"O well, I'll be careful of her sensibilities. It's my duty to speak
with her. I'm here in