think you'll have to carry out that little plan of yours.
Sell out as soon as you can, and take Louie with you to a farm in
Minnesota."

"Easier said than done," said Jack, sententiously.

"Done? why, man, it's easy enough. You can drop the other three, and
retire from the scene. That'll save Louie from coming to grief."

"Yes; but it won't make her come to Minnesota."

"Why not? She's just the girl to go anywhere with a fellow."

"But not with Jack Randolph."

"What humbug are you up to now? I don't understand you."

"So I see," said Jack, dryly. "You take it for granted that because I
proposed, Louie accepted. Whereas, that didn't happen to be the case. I
proposed, but Louie disposed of me pretty effectually."

"Mittened?" cried I.

"Mittened!" said Jack, solemnly. "Hence the gravestone."

"But how, in the name of wonder, did that happen?"

"Easily enough. Louie happens to have brains. That's the shortest way
to account for her refusal of my very valuable devotions. But I'll tell
you all about it, and, after that, we'll decide about the headstone.

"You see, I went up there this evening, and the other girls were off
somewhere, and so Louie and I were alone. The aunt was in the room, but
she soon dozed off. Well, we had great larks, no end of fun--she
chaffing and twitting me about no end of things, and especially the
widow; so, do you know, I told her I had a great mind to tell her how
it happened; and excited her curiosity by saying it all originated in a
mistake. This, of course, made her wild to know all about it, and so I
at last told her the whole thing--the mistake, you know, about the
hand, and all that--and my horror. Well, hang me, if I didn't think
she'd go into fits. I never saw her laugh so much before. As soon as
she could speak, she began to remind me of the approaching advent of
Miss Phillips, and asked me what I was going to do. She didn't appear
to be at all struck by the fact that lay at the bottom of my
disclosures; that it was her own hand that had caused the mischief, but
went on at a wild rate about my approaching 'sentimental seesaw,' as
she called it, when my whole time would have to be divided between my
two _fiancees_. She remarked that the old proverb called man a pendulum
between a smile and a tear, but that I was the first true case of a
human pendulum which she had ever seen.

"Now the little scamp was so perfectly fascinating while she was
teasing me, that I felt myself o