could discover whether he was agreeably surprised or disappointed
in the letter,--whether he had expected, if he ever encountered
it, to find it writhing in coils on the floor of a cage, or
whether it simply bore no resemblance to the ideal already
established in his mind.

Mrs. Wiley had once tried to make something of Mercy, the oldest
daughter of the family, but at the end of six weeks she announced
that a girl who couldn't tell whether the clock was going
"forrards or backwards," and who rubbed a pocket handkerchief as
long as she did a sheet, would be no help in her household.

The Crambrys had daily walked the five or six miles from their
home to the Edgewood bridge during the progress of the drive, not
only for the social and intellectual advantages to be gained from
the company present, but for the more solid compensation of a
good meal. They all adored Rose, partly because she gave them
food, and partly because she was sparkling and pretty and wore
pink dresses that caught their dull eyes.

The afternoon proved a lively one. In the first place, one of
the younger men slipped into the water between two logs, part of
a lot chained together waiting to be let out of the boom. The
weight of the mass higher up and the force of the current wedged
him in rather tightly, and when he had been "pried" out he
declared that he felt like an apple after it had been squeezed in
the cider-mill, so he drove home, and Rufus Waterman took his
place.

Two hours' hard work followed this incident, and at the end of