the gate.

At sight of him had the pink of her cheeks increased, lessened, or did it
continue to cover its normal area of ground? It was a question meditated
several hundreds of times by her visitor in after-hours--the meditation,
after wearying involutions, always ending in one way, that it was
impossible to say.

"Your handkerchief: Miss Day: I called with." He held it out
spasmodically and awkwardly. "Mother found it: under a chair."

"O, thank you very much for bringing it, Mr. Dewy. I couldn't think
where I had dropped it."

Now Dick, not being an experienced lover--indeed, never before having
been engaged in the practice of love-making at all, except in a small
schoolboy way--could not take advantage of the situation; and out came
the blunder, which afterwards cost him so many bitter moments and a
sleepless night:-

"Good morning, Miss Day."

"Good morning, Mr. Dewy."

The gate was closed; she was gone; and Dick was standing outside,
unchanged in his condition from what he had been before he called. Of
course the Angel was not to blame--a young woman living alone in a house
could not ask him indoors unless she had known him better--he should have
kept her outside before floundering into that fatal farewell. He wished
that before he called he had realized more fully than he did the pleasure