him. He clasped it in his arms with every demonstration of affection;
and then he looked at me and became embarrassed. He evidently felt that
he ought to say something, but the difficulty was what to say. At last
a bright idea seemed to strike him. His countenance cleared, and he
spoke with much feeling. 'I am afraid you are rather wet,' he observed;
and then he left me, and a sympathetic landlady, who keeps a little
public-house by the river, and had witnessed the occurrence, took me in
and dried me. She gave me whisky and hot water, and entertained me for
the rest of the afternoon. She is a remarkable woman, and I should
visit her often were it not for her love of, and faith in, whisky and
hot water. I tell her there are five things which make the nose red--
viz., cold, tight-lacing, disease of the right side of the heart,
dyspepsia, and alcohol, and the greatest of these is alcohol; but she
says a little colour anywhere would be an improvement to me, and I feel
that I can have nothing in common with a woman who has such bad taste
in the distribution of colour."




CHAPTER VII.


Ideala's notions of propriety were altogether unconventional. She never
could be made to understand that it was not the proper thing to talk
familiarly to any one she met, and discuss any subject they were equal
to with them.

"It is good for people to talk, and natural, and therefore proper," she
said. "If I can give pleasure to a stranger by doing so, or he can give