and her brother, and FLORA POTTS is ridiculously and absurdly alone.

Under the ardent sun of August, Bumsteadville slowly bakes, like an
ogre's family-dish of stuffed cottages and greens, with here and there
some slowly moving object, like a loose vegetable on a sluggish current
of tidal gravy, and the spire of the Ritualistic church shooting-up at
one end like an incorrigibly perpendicular leg of magnified mutton.

Hotter and hotter comes the breath fiery of nature's cookery, until some
of the stuffing boils out of one cottage, in the shape of the Oldest
Inhabitant, who makes his usual annual remark, that this is the Warmest
Day in ninety-eight years, and then simmers away to some cooler nook
amongst the greens. More and more intolerably quivers the atmosphere of
the sylvan oven with stifling fervency, until there oozes from beneath
the shingled crust of a vegetarian country-boarding-house a parboiled
guest from the City, who, believing himself almost ready to turn, drifts
feebly to where the roads fork and there is a shade more dun; while, to
the speculative mind, each glowing field of corn, or buckwheat, is an
incipient Meal, and each chimney, or barn, a mere temptation to guess
how many Swallows there may be in it.

Upon the afternoon of such a day as this, Miss POTTS is informed, by a
servant, that Mr. BUMSTEAD has arrived, and, sending her his love, would
be pleased to have her come down stairs to him and bring him a fan.

"Why didn't you tell him I wasn't at home, you absurd thing?" cries the
young girl, hurriedly practicing a series of agitated looks and pensive
smiles before her mirror.

"So I did, Miss," answers the attached menial, "but he'd seen you