"I hope you have room for me, Mr. Delano," said he, advancing, "for
here I am, weather-bound, as well as Miss Alice and Kate. There is a
drizzling rain falling out-of-doors, and your Kentucky roads are fast
growing impassable for walkers."

Uncle John put into words the question that Alice's eyes had been
asking so eagerly.

"Where did you stumble from, my dear fellow,--and at this time of
night, too?"

"Why, I could not find any one at home on Fourth Street, so I took the
last ferry-boat and came over, on a venture, to try the Kentucky
hospitality, of which we New-Yorkers hear so much; and my stumbling
walk through the mud made me so unpresentable, that I found the way
round the house to Aunt Molly's premises, and left the tracks of my
muddy boots all over her white kitchen, till she, in despair, provided
me with a pair of your moccasins, and, shod in these shoes of silence,
I came quietly in upon you. I do hope you are all glad to see me," he
added, sitting down on the low seat that Alice had left, and looking
up in her face as she stood by her uncle.

Alice shook her head with a pretty assumption of displeasure, as she
said, "I told you I did not want to see you till to-morrow." But
hardly half an hour had elapsed before she and Herbert had wandered
off into the parlor, and Uncle John and I were left to watch them
through the open door.

"If he were not so impulsive," said Uncle John, abruptly,--"if he were