we brought Kitty along! If she should marry and settle down in
Boston--no, I hope she could get her husband to live in New York--"

"Go on, go on, my dear!" cried Colonel Ellison, with a groan of despair.
"Kitty has talked twenty-five minutes with this young man about the
hotels and steamboats, and of course he'll be round to-morrow morning
asking my consent to marry her as soon as we can get to a justice of the
peace. My hair is gradually turning gray, and I shall be bald before my
time; but I don't mind that if you find any pleasure in these little
hallucinations of yours. _Go_ on!"




II.

MRS. ELLISON'S LITTLE MANEUVRE.


The next morning our tourists found themselves at rest in Ha-Ha Bay, at
the head of navigation for the larger steamers. The long line of sullen
hills had fallen away, and the morning sun shone warm on what in a
friendlier climate would have been a very lovely landscape. The bay was
an irregular oval, with shores that rose in bold but not lofty heights
on one side, while on the other lay a narrow plain with two villages
clinging about the road that followed the crescent beach, and lifting
each the slender tin-clad spire of its church to sparkle in the sun.

At the head of the bay was a mountainous top, and along its waters were
masses of rocks, gayly painted with lichens and stained with metallic