charged with a delicious whiff of it, after buzzing like a great bee at
that particular chimneypot.

'Pa,' said Bella, sipping the fragrant mixture and warming her favourite
ankle; 'when old Mr Harmon made such a fool of me (not to mention
himself, as he is dead), what do you suppose he did it for?'

'Impossible to say, my dear. As I have told you time out of number since
his will was brought to light, I doubt if I ever exchanged a hundred
words with the old gentleman. If it was his whim to surprise us, his
whim succeeded. For he certainly did it.'

'And I was stamping my foot and screaming, when he first took notice of
me; was I?' said Bella, contemplating the ankle before mentioned.

'You were stamping your little foot, my dear, and screaming with your
little voice, and laying into me with your little bonnet, which you
had snatched off for the purpose,' returned her father, as if the
remembrance gave a relish to the rum; 'you were doing this one Sunday
morning when I took you out, because I didn't go the exact way you
wanted, when the old gentleman, sitting on a seat near, said, "That's a
nice girl; that's a VERY nice girl; a promising girl!" And so you were,
my dear.'

'And then he asked my name, did he, pa?'

'Then he asked your name, my dear, and mine; and on other Sunday
mornings, when we walked his way, we saw him again, and--and really
that's all.'