into her lover's face with real anxiety.

"I only wish he would!" was the reply.

"Why, you do not mean to say that you would fight him?"

"With the sword, if he has one--no!" he said. "Not with anything more
dangerous than a piece of rattan. I would not mind polishing off his
dainty hide with _that_! Besides, if I quarrelled with him, who made me?
You! He sat too near you, and you not only talked with him but _looked_
at him. What business had you to look at him? Eh?"

"Oh, you cruel fellow!" said the young girl, not disposed to scold more
sharply, even at _folly_, when it had such a sediment of true love lying
beneath the froth.

"Oh, you handsome torment!" was the reply of the lover, as he took that
one auspicious moment to enfold the young girl in his arms and give her
half a dozen warm, close, voluptuous kisses full on the lips--such
kisses as people should never indulge in who do not know exactly the
haven toward which they are sailing.

"What are you doing _now_, impudence!" uttered the thoroughly-kissed
girl, making just so much resistance as seemed becoming, and yet meeting
her lover nearly enough half-way to make the exercise rather
exhilarating.

"What am I doing? 'Locking up' a 'form'--you know I am a printer!" said
the young man, taking yet another "proof" of affection. But here the
alarmed reader will be spared the succession of bad puns, peculiar to
the printing-office, with which this specimen was followed, and which
has probably been to some extent indulged in by every disciple of Faust
more or less in love, since Adam worked off the first proof of his
breakfast bill-of-fare, on the original hand-press, in one corner of the
Garden of Eden.

The young man was yet standing with his arm around the waist of Emily,
just within the door leading from the parlor into the hall, and yet
other farewell kisses and reproaches might have been on the possible
programme,--when both were startled by a sharp scream from Aunt Martha,
who was yet standing on the piazza with the Colonel near her.

"Ough-ough-oh!"

Wallace and Emily at once rushed to the front door, under the belief
that some sudden accident had befallen the lady; but at that moment
there was a loud crash, followed by other voices screaming; and in the
street, almost in front of the door, a painful and threatening spectacle
presented itself.

As afterwards appeared, when the various parties became sufficiently
collected to ascertain what had re