How harshly sounded the creaking of the furniture, and how strangely commercial and matter-of-fact the voices of the people that announced the conclusion of the lecture!  Mrs. Hunesley managed to get out among the first, and was heartily glad to see my newly acquired friend, calling her, “My dear Kate,”—­which I thought was a very pretty name,—­and saying that she had not expected her quite so soon.

I looked into the parlor and saw the Prowley party tumbling over chairs, and scaling settees, in their haste to meet the cooling breezes of the piazza.  But when they finally accomplished their purpose, and I was advancing with inquiries and congratulations, I started at seeing the surprise depicted in the countenance of Miss Hurribattle, as she gazed in the direction where I stood.

“Why, Aunt Patience!” exclaimed a voice at my side.

“Why, Kate Hurribattle!” was the response.

“How in the name of wonder did you get to Foxden?”

“How under the sun did you get to Foxden?”

“Why I am here naturally enough as the guest of my friend Colonel Prowley.”

“And I am here naturally enough as the guest of my friend Mrs. Hunesley.”

Now if I had dramatized the little event I have been trying to relate, I should have reached the precise point where the auditor would button up his coat, put on his hat, let his patent spring-seat go up with a click, and begin to leave the theatre with all expedition.  What would it matter to him that I had prepared a circumstantial account of how all petty objections were got over, or that I had elaborated a peculiarly felicitous tag which Colonel Prowley would speak at a few backs as they disappeared into the lobby?  The auditor referred to has got an inkling of how things are to end, and can guess out the particulars as he hurries off to his business.  And here will be observed our decided advantage in having made sure of the Moral by a vigorous assertion of the same at the commencement of this narrative; for, thus relieved of the necessity of a final flutter into the empyrean of ethics, we may part company in a few easy sentences.

Although the circumstances I have set down, from being awkwardly packed in a small compass, may not appear to fit into each other with all the exactness of a dissecting-map, I am sure, that, as they really occurred spread over a necessary time, they seemed natural and simple enough.  Mrs. Hunesley, Doctor Dastick’s favorite niece, was the schoolmate of Miss Kate Hurribattle, and what more likely than that she should invite her friend to pass a few weeks with her at her summer-home in the country?  And could there be a greater necessity than that, meeting daily as we did through those lovely August weeks, she should become—­in short, that I should marry Miss Hurribattle?