their names mentioned, you shall learn at the end, when I have finished
with the wedding; for this happy story of love ends with a wedding, and
begins in the Woman's Exchange, which the ladies of Kings Port have
established, and (I trust) lucratively conduct, in Royal Street.

Royal Street! There's a relevance in this name, a fitness to my errand;
but that is pure accident.

The Woman's Exchange happened to be there, a decorous resort for those
who became hungry, as I did, at the hour of noon each day. In my very
pleasant boarding-house, where, to be sure, there was one dreadful
boarder, a tall lady, whom I soon secretly called Juno--but let
unpleasant things wait--in the very pleasant house where I boarded (I had
left my hotel after one night) our breakfast was at eight, and our dinner
not until three: sacred meal hours in Kings Port, as inviolable, I fancy,
as the Declaration of Independence, but a gap quite beyond the stretch of
my Northern vitals. Therefore, at twelve, it was my habit to leave my
Fanning researches for a while, and lunch at the Exchange upon chocolate
and sandwiches most delicate in savor. As, one day, I was luxuriously
biting one of these, I heard his voice and what he was saying. Both the
voice and the interesting order he was giving caused me, at my small
table, in the dim back of the room, to stop and watch him where he stood
in the light at the counter to the right of the entrance door. Young he
was, very young, twenty-two or three at the most, and as he stood, with
hat in hand, speaking to the pretty girl behind the counter, his head and
side-face were of a romantic and high-strung look. It was a cake that he
desired made, a cake for a wedding; and I directly found myself curious
to know whose wedding. Even a dull wedding interests me more than other
dull events, because it can arouse so much surmise and so much prophecy;
but in this wedding I instantly, because of his strange and winning