The conversation that followed it would be vain to report, even if it were possible; for the force of ejaculations depends so much on tone,—­which our types do not know how to convey; and their punctuation-marks, I fear, were such as are not in use in any well-regulated printing-office.  In due time it came to an end; and when Greenleaf took his unwilling departure, having repeatedly said good-bye, with the usual confirmation, he could no more remember what had been said in that miraculous hour than a bee flying home from a garden could tell you about the separate blossoms from which he (the Sybarite!) had gathered his freight of flower-dust.

One thing only he heard which the wisely incurious reader will care to know.  Alice had met her cousin, Walter Monroe, the day before, had received a proper scolding for her absurd independence, and, after a frank settlement of the heart-question which came up on the day of her flight, had promised at once to return to his house,—­where, for the brief remainder of our story, she is to be found.  Let us wish her joy,—­and the kind, motherly aunt, also.

Greenleaf went directly to Easelmann’s room, opened the door, and spread his arms.

“Have you a strawberry-mark?” he shouted.

“No.”

“Then you are my long-lost brother!  Come to my arms!”

Easelmann laughed long and loudly.

“Forgive my nonsense, Easelmann.  I know I am beside myself and ready for any extravagance,—­I am so full of joy.  I feared, in coming along the street, that I should break out into singing, or fall to dancing, like the Scriptural hills.”

“Then you have succeeded, and the girl is yours!  I forgive your stupid old joke.  You can say and do just what you like.  You have a right to be jolly, and to make a prodigious fool of yourself, if you want to.  I should like to have heard you.  You were very poetical, quoted Tennyson, fell on your knees, and perhaps blubbered a little.  You are sentimental, you know.”

“I am happy, I know, and I don’t care whether you think me sentimental or not.”

“Well, I wish you joy anyhow.  Let us make a night of it.  ’It is our royal pleasure to be’—­imagine the rest of the line.  ’Now is the winter of our discontent.’  ‘My bosom’s lord sits lightly on his throne.’  Come, let us make ready, and we’ll talk till

  “’Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
  Stands tiptoe on the misty’—­

misty steeple of Park-Street Church,—­since we haven’t any misty mountaintops in the neighborhood.”

“One would think you the happy man.”

“I am; your enthusiasm is so contagious that I am back in my twenties again.”

“Why do you take your pleasure vicariously?  There is Mrs. Sandford, the charming woman; I love her, because”—­

“No, Sir, not her,—­one is enough.”

“Then why not love her yourself?  We’ll make a double-barrelled shot of it,—­two couples brought down by one parson.”