his great annual party to the town, asked us. I confess I hated to go.
I was deep in the new volume of Pfeiffer's _Mystics_, which Haliburton
had just sent me from Boston. "But how rude," said Polly, "not to
return the Governor's civility and Mrs. Gorges's, when they will be
sure to ask why you are away!" Still I demurred, and at last she, with
the wit of Eve and of Semiramis conjoined, let me off by saying that,
if I would go in with her, and sustain the initial conversations with
the Governor and the ladies staying there, she would risk Dennis for
the rest of the evening. And that was just what we did. She took
Dennis in training all that afternoon, instructed him in fashionable
conversation, cautioned him against the temptations of the
supper-table--and at nine in the evening he drove us all down in the
carryall. I made the grand star-entrée with Polly and the pretty
Walton girls, who were staying with us. We had put Dennis into a great
rough top-coat, without his glasses--and the girls never dreamed, in
the darkness, of looking at him. He sat in the carriage, at the door,
while we entered. I did the agreeable to Mrs. Gorges, was introduced
to her niece. Miss Fernanda--I complimented Judge Jeffries on his
decision in the great case of D'Aulnay _vs._ Laconia Mining Co.--I
stepped into the dressing-room for a moment--stepped out for
another--walked home, after a nod with Dennis, and tying the horse to
a pump--and while I walked home, Mr. Frederic Ingham, my double,
stepped in through the library into the Gorges's grand saloon.

Oh! Polly died of laughing as she told me of it at midnight! And even
here, where I have to teach my hands to hew the beech for stakes to
fence our cave, she dies of laughing as she recalls it--and says that
single occasion was worth all we have paid for it. Gallant Eve that
she is! She joined Dennis at the library door, and in an instant
presented him to Dr. Ochterlong, from Baltimore, who was on a visit in