ng! If she should marry and settle down in
Boston--no, I hope she could get her husband to live in New York--"

"Go on, go on, my dear!" cried Colonel Ellison, with a groan of despair.
"Kitty has talked twenty-five minutes with this young man about the
hotels and steamboats, and of course he'll be round to-morrow morning
asking my consent to marry her as soon as we can get to a justice of the
peace. My hair is gradually turning gray, and I shall be bald before my
time; but I don't mind that if you find any pleasure in these little
hallucinations of yours. _Go_ on!"

II.

MRS. ELLISON'S LITTLE MANEUVRE.

The next morning our tourists found themselves at rest in Ha-Ha Bay, at
the head of navigation for the larger steamers. The long line of sullen
hills had fallen away, and the morning sun shone warm on what in a
friendlier climate would have been a very lovely landscape. The bay was
an irregular oval, with shores that rose in bold but not lofty heights
on one side, while on the other lay a narrow plain with two villages
clinging about the road that followed the crescent beach, and lifting
each the slender tin-clad spire of its church to sparkle in the sun.

At the head of the bay was a mountainous top, and along its waters were
masses of rocks, gayly painted with lichens and stained with metallic
tints of orange and scarlet. The unchanging growth of stunted pines was
the only forest in sight, though Ha-Ha Bay is a famous lumbering port,
and some schooners now lay there receiving cargoes of odorous pine
plank. The steamboat-wharf was all astir with the liveliest toil and
leisure. The boat was taking on wood, which was brought in wheelbarrows
to the top of the steep, smooth gangway-planking, where the _habitant_
in charge planted his broad feet for the downward slide, and was hurled
aboard more or less _en masse_ by the fierce velocity of his heavy-laden
wheelbarrow. Amidst the confusion and hazard of this feat a procession
of other habitans marched aboard, each one bearing under his arm a
coffin-shaped wooden box. The rising fear of Colonel Ellison, that these
boxes represented the loss of the whole infant population of Ha-Ha Bay,
was checked by the reflection that the region could not have produced so
many children, and calmed altogether by the purser, who said that they
were full of huckleberries, and that Colonel Ellison could have as many
as he liked for fifteen cents a bushel. This gave him a keen sense of