everybody to be happy, and fat, and well as she was, and would urge the necessity of wine, and entire idleness, and horse-exercise, upon a poor minister, just as honestly and energetically as if he could have afforded them:  an idea to the contrary never crossed her mind spontaneously, but, if introduced there, brought forth direct results of bottles, bank-bills, and loans of ancient horses, only to be checked by friendly remonstrance, or the suggestion that a poor man might be also proud.  Mr. Bowen was tall and spare, a man of much sense and shrewd kindliness, but altogether subject and submissive to “Kitten’s” slightest wish.  She never wanted anything; no princess in a story-book had less to desire; and this entire spoiling and indulgence seemed to her only the natural course of things.  She took it as an open rose takes sunshine, with so much simplicity, and heartiness, and beaming content, and perfume of sweet, careless affection, that she was not given over to any little vanities or affectations, but was always a dear, good little child, as happy as the day was long, and quite without a fear or apprehension.  I had seen very little of her in those three summers, for I had been away at the sea-side, trying to fan the flickering life that alone was left to me with pungent salt breezes and stinging baptisms of spray, but I had liked that little pretty well.  I did not think her so silly as Laura did:  she seemed to me so purely simple, that I sometimes wondered if her honest directness and want of guile were folly or not.  But I liked to see her, as she cantered past my door on her pony, the gold tendrils thick clustered about her throat and under the brim of her black hat, and her bright blue eyes sparkling with the keen air, and a real wild-rose bloom on her smiling face.  She was a prettier sight even than my profuse chrysanthemums, whose masses of garnet and yellow and white nodded languidly to the autumn winds to-day.

I recalled myself from this dream of recollection, better satisfied with Miss Bowen than I had been before.  I could see just how her beauty had bewitched Frank,—­so bright, so tiny, so loving:  one always wants to gather a little, gay, odor-breathing rose-bud for one’s own, and such she was to him.

So then I opened his letter.  It was dry and stiff:  men’s letters almost always are; they cannot say what they feel; they will be fluent of statistics, or description, or philosophy, or politics, but as to feeling,—­there they are dumb, except in real love-letters, and, of course, Frank’s was unsatisfactory accordingly.  Once, toward the end, came out a natural sentence:  “Oh, Sue! if you knew her, you wouldn’t wonder!” So he had, after all, felt the apology he would not speak; he had some little deference left for his deserted theories.