She continued to look straight before her at the glowing evening sky, and so did he.  The crickets and katydids had commenced their chorus and the tree-toads their long rhythm.  Fire-flies flitted in the uncertain light.  There came from the woods the call of the owl and the whippoorwill.

“We have sometimes laughed together at sentiment,” he continued, “and voted it an invention of the story-books; but there are times—­there is a sentiment—­which—­in short, dear Nina, I have come to ask you to be my little wife.  I have loved you almost since our first meeting.”

“Oh, Mr. Barwood,” said she, looking hastily towards him, with heightened color and a tone of regret, “you must not say so.  I cannot let you go on.”

“I must go on,” said he.  “I have never felt so strongly upon any subject as this.  I know I am not worthy of such happiness, yet I cannot bear the thought of losing it.  Consider our long friendship.  You will be mine?  Oh, say so, Nina!” In the terrible dread that his petition was already refused, he became a little incoherent.

Nina, a tender-hearted young lady, was by this time in tears.  His evident distress, and her recognition of the great compliment he had paid her, would have commanded almost any return save the one he asked.  But the sacrifice was too great.  She had not thought it would ever be necessary to change their relation of friendship.

“I am very sorry to have to say what is painful to you,” said she, with a sob only half repressed.  “I want you to be always my friend.  I shall be very unhappy if our friendship is to be broken, but I cannot—­you will find some other”—­

“Do not speak further,” he interrupted, impetuously.  “You have not yet said no.  Reserve your answer; take time to consider.  Let me still hope.”

“No,” she began, “I ought”—­but wheels and merry voices were heard at the gate.  “Oh!  I cannot let them see me now,” she said, and hurried away.  In a moment more the Robinsons’ carriage was at the steps.  When Nina came down with a sweet, subdued manner, there was a jolly party of ten or twelve in the drawing-room.  Mars Brown was already amusing everybody with his absurd posturing.

“I want to be Evangeline,” said he, wrapping a lady’s shawl about him and sitting on the arm of a chair in a collapsed attitude.  “No, on second thought, I want to be Basil the blacksmith.”  He made imitations of tremendous muscular power with a tack-hammer that happened in his way for a sledge.  Everybody on such occasions has his own notions of the picturesque.  A deal of talking was required in arranging the various scenes.  Evangeline must manifest a “celestial brightness,” according to the lines.  “I don’t think you do it quite right,” said Julia Robinson.  “You should smile a little.”

“Oh no, not at all; she should have an earnest, far off look,” said another critic.

“Of course she should,” said Mars Brown, rumpling his hair and contorting his features into an expression of idiotic vacancy; “something this way.”