During the festival seasons, Uncle Tom averred, they wore out the latch
on the front gate. If their families possessed horses to spare, they took
Honora driving in Forest Park; they escorted her to those anomalous
dances peculiar to their innocent age, which are neither children's
parties nor full-fledged balls; their presents, while of no intrinsic
value--as one young gentleman said in a presentation speech--had an
enormous, if shy, significance.

"What a beautiful ring you are wearing, Honora," Uncle Tom remarked slyly
one April morning at breakfast; "let me see it."

Honora blushed, and hid her hand under the table-cloth.

And the ring-suffice it to say that her little finger was exactly
insertable in a ten-cent piece from which everything had been removed but
the milling: removed with infinite loving patience by Mr. Rossiter, and
at the expense of much history and philosophy and other less important
things, in his college bedroom at New Haven. Honora wore it for a whole
week; a triumph indeed for Mr. Rossiter; when it was placed in a box in
Honora's bedroom, which contained other gifts--not all from him--and many
letters, in the writing of which learning had likewise suffered. The
immediate cause of the putting away of this ring was said to be the
renowned Clinton Howe, who was on the Harvard football eleven, and who
visited Mr. George Hanbury that Easter. Fortunate indeed the tailor who
was called upon to practise his art on an Adonis like Mr. Howe, and it
was remarked that he scarcely left Honora's side at the garden party and
dance which Mrs. Dwyer gave in honour of the returning heroes, on the
Monday of Easter week.

This festival, on which we should like to linger, but cannot, took place