castle so near: if I were alone, positively I should feel eerie."

"Are you dull at home, Mr. Forrester?" was sent out from the depths of
Will's chest, and sent back again just as Bessie came out and joined
the party.

"Boys! boys!" she said, "don't be foolish."

"Why, it was what you said yourself," her sister remarked.

"_Are_ you ever dull?" the lad shouted again.

"Often," answered Edwin, and "Often" came back instantly.

"In that case, Mr. Forrester," said Mrs. Parker, "why don't you get a
wife? There's no company for a young man like a good wife. Here's Miss
Ormiston; I don't think you could do better."

Think of the delicate wound of these young people being thus openly
probed in broad moonlight in the presence of so many people! What
could Mrs. Parker be thinking of? Not of her own love-passages surely,
or, if she was, they must have been of a blunter order than those of
the Rose and her lover.

"Oh no," said Bessie in cool, indifferent tones: "Mr. Forrester knows
better than that."

"There!" said Edwin, "you see, Mrs. Parker, I have been refused."

"'Faint heart never won fair lady,'" said Mrs. Parker.