“Sorra any wan with him but his cane, Miss; and that he axed me wud I sthand it behind the dure for him.”

There was a look of desperate purpose about this.  When a sentimental young man seeks a private interview with a marriageable young woman, and recklessly refuses at the outset to retain at least his cane for the solution of the intricate conversational problem of what to do with his hands, it is an infallible sign that some madly rash intention has temporarily overpowered his usual sheepish imbecility, and that he may be expected to speak and act with almost human intelligence.

With hand instinctively pressed upon her heart, to moderate its too sanguine pulsations and show the delicate lace around her cuffs, Flora shyly entered the parlor, and surprised Mr. Pendragon striding up and down the apartment like one of the more comic of the tragic actors of the day.

“Miss Potts!” ejaculated the wild young Southern pedestrian, pausing suddenly at her approach, with considerable excitement of manner, “scorn me, spurn me, if you will; but do not let sectional embitterment blind you to the fact that I am here by the request of Mr. Dibble.”

“I wasn’t scorning and spurning anybody,” explained the startled orphan, coyly accepting the chair he pushed forward.  “I’m sure I don’t feel any sectional hatred, nor any other ridiculous thing.”

“Forgive me!” pleaded Montgomery.  “I reckon I’m a heap too sensitive about my Southern birth; but only think, Miss Potts, what I’ve had to go through since I’ve been amongst you Yankees!  Fancy what it is to be suspected of a murder, and have no political influence.”

“It must be so absurd!” murmured Flora.

“I’ve felt wretched enough about it to become a contributor to the first-class American comic paper on the next floor below me,” he continued, gloomily.  “And here, to-day, without any explanation, your guardian desires me to come here and wait for him.”

“I’m sorry that’s such a trial for you, Mr. Pendragon,” simpered the Flowerpot.  “Perhaps you’d prefer to wait on the front stoop and appear as though you’d just come, you know?”

“And can you think,” cried the young man with increased agitation “that it would be any trial for me to be in your society, if—?  But tell me, Miss Potts, has your guardian the right to dispose of your hand in marriage?”

“I suppose so,” answered Flora, with innocent surprise and a pretty blush; “he has charge of all my money matters, you know.”

“Then it is as I feared,” groaned her questioner, smiting his forehead.  “He is coming here to-day to tell you what man of opulence he wants you to have, and I am to be witness to my own hopelessness!”

“What makes you think anything so ridiculous, you absurd thing?” asked the orphan, not unkindly.

“He as good as said so,” sighed the unhappy Southerner.  “He told me, with his own mouth, that he wanted to get you off his hands as soon as possible, and thought he saw his way clear to do it.”