reason Kitty was able to enjoy with novel satisfaction the
picturesqueness of Mountain Street, and they both admired the huge
shoulder of rock near the gate, with its poplars atop, and the battery
at the brink, with the muzzles of the guns thrust forward against the
sky. She could not move him to her pleasure in the grotesqueness of the
circus-bills plastered half-way up the rock; but he tolerated the levity
with which she commented on them, and her light sallies upon passing
things, and he said nothing to prevent her reaching home in serene
satisfaction.

"Well, Kitty," said the tenant of the sofa, as Kitty and the colonel
drew up to the table on which the tea was laid at the sofa-side, "you've
had a nice walk, haven't you?"

"O yes, very nice. That is, the first part of it wasn't very nice; but
after a while we reached an old church in the Lower Town,--which was
very interesting,--and then we appeared to cheer up and take a new
start."

"Well," asked the colonel, "what did you find so interesting at that old
church?"

"Why, there was a baby's funeral; and an old woman, perfectly crushed by
some trouble or other, praying before an altar, and--"

"It seems to take very little to cheer you up," said the colonel. "All
you ask of your fellow-beings is a heart-breaking bereavement and a
religious agony, and you are lively at once. _Some_ people might require
human sacrifices, but you don't."