a chicken that is determined to get across the road in front of an
automobile. I would walk into Florence's pretty, little,
old-fashioned room, take off my hat, and sit down.

Florence had, of course, several other fellows, too--strapping
young New Englanders, who worked during the day in New York
and spent only the evenings in the village of their birth. And, in
the evenings, they would march in on Florence with almost as
much determination as I myself showed. And I am bound to say
that they were received with as much disfavour as was my
portion--from the Misses Hurlbird. . . .

They were curious old creatures, those two. It was almost as if they
were members of an ancient family under some curse--they were
so gentlewomanly, so proper, and they sighed so. Sometimes I
would see tears in their eyes. I do not know that my courtship of
Florence made much progress at first. Perhaps that was because it
took place almost entirely during the daytime, on hot afternoons,
when the clouds of dust hung like fog, right up as high as the tops
of the thin-leaved elms. The night, I believe, is the proper season
for the gentle feats of love, not a Connecticut July afternoon, when
any sort of proximity is an almost appalling thought. But, if I never
so much as kissed Florence, she let me discover very easily, in the
course of a fortnight, her simple wants. And I could supply those
wants. . . .

She wanted to marry a gentleman of leisure; she wanted a
European establishment. She wanted her husband to have an
English accent, an income of fifty thousand dollars a year from
real estate and no ambitions to increase that income. And--she