inquire, half resolved to end my journey here, if mine host could
accommodate me for a month. Bessie heaved a sigh, saying it should
be done if she had to give up her own room. To which I replied that
nothing could induce me to give her trouble for my sake; that I
would take up my lodgings upon the corn shed, where, with the stars
and her charms to occupy my musings, I could be so happy.

When supper was over, Bessie ushered me into a large sitting room,
on the left of the hall, and bid me good night. A large, square
table, upon which was a copy of Godey's Lady's Book, the New England
Cultivator, the New Bedford Mercury, and sundry other papers of good
morals, stood in the center of the room. The walls were papered in
bright colors, and the floor was covered with an Uxbridge carpet,
the colors of which were green and red, and made fresh by the glare
of a spirit lamp that burned upon the table. A chart of the South
Shoal, a map of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and sundry rude
drawings in crayon and water colors, hung suspended from the walls.
The air of quiet cheerfulness that pervaded the sitting room,
bespoke the care Bessie had bestowed upon it, and the active part
she took in the management of the household. And, too, there was a
piano standing open at one end of the room, for Bessie, in addition
to having studied Latin and algebra two years at the high school,
had taken music lessons of Monsieur Pensin‚, and could play seven
tunes right off.

An aged, clerical-looking man, his visage lean and careworn, with
his newly-married bride, a simply clad country girl of eighteen, sat
at a window, looking out upon a little square, and every few minutes
exchanging caresses they imagined were seen by no one else in the
room. Indeed, when they were not caressing, they were whispering in