"Papa, I am sure," Annette repeated--"sure I have influence with Mr.
Tinman."

"There are those lips of yours shutting tight," said her father. "Just
listen, and they make a big O. The donkey! He owns you've got
influence, and he offers he'll be silent if you'll pledge your word to
marry him. I'm not sure he didn't say, within the year. I told him to
look sharp not to be knocked down again. Mart Tinman for my son-in-law!
That's an upside down of my expectations, as good as being at the
antipodes without a second voyage back! I let him know you were
engaged."

Annette gazed at her father open-mouthed, as he had predicted; now with
a little chilly dimple at one corner of the mouth, now at another--as a
breeze curves the leaden winter lake here and there. She could not get
his meaning into her sight, and she sought, by looking hard, to
understand it better; much as when some solitary maiden lady, passing
into her bedchamber in the hours of darkness, beholds--tradition telling
us she has absolutely beheld foot of burglar under bed; and lo! she
stares, and, cunningly to moderate her horror, doubts, yet cannot but
believe that there is a leg, and a trunk, and a head, and two terrible
arms, bearing pistols, to follow. Sick, she palpitates; she compresses
her trepidation; she coughs, perchance she sings a bar or two of an aria.
Glancing down again, thrice horrible to her is it to discover that there
is no foot! For had it remained, it might have been imagined a harmless,
empty boot. But the withdrawal has a deadly significance of animal life
. . . .

In like manner our stricken Annette perceived the object; so did she
gradually apprehend the fact of her being asked for Tinman's bride, and