She delivered this little speech with a caressing manner which totally fascinated Wade.

Nothing was ever so absolutely pretty as Mrs. Peter Skerrett.  Her complete prettiness left nothing to be desired.

“Never,” thought Wade, “did I see such a compact little casket of perfections.  Every feature is thoroughly well done and none intrusively superior.  Her little nose is a combination of all the amiabilities.  Her black eyes sparkle with fun and mischief and wit, all playing over deep tenderness below.  Her hair ripples itself full of gleams and shadows.  The same coquetry of Nature that rippled her hair has dinted her cheeks with shifting dimples.  Every time she smiles—­and she smiles as if sixty an hour were not half allowance—­a dimple slides into view and vanishes like a dot in a flow of sunny water.  And, O Peter Skerrett! if you were not the best fellow in the world, I should envy you that latent kiss of a mouth.”

“You need not say it, Wade,—­your broken head exempts you from the business of compliments,” said Peter; “but I see you think my wife perfection.  You’ll think so the more, the more you know her.”

“Stop, Peter,” said she, “or I shall have to hide behind the superior charms of Mary Damer.”

Miss Damer certainly was a woman of a grander order.  You might pull at the bells or knock at the knockers and be introduced into the boudoirs of all the houses, villas, seats, chateaus, and palaces in Christendom without seeing such another.  She belonged distinctly to the Northern races,—­the “brave and true and tender” women.  There was, indeed, a trace of hauteur and imperiousness in her look and manner; but it did not ill become her distinguished figure and face.  Wade, however, remembered her sweet earnestness when she was playing leech to his wound, and chose to take that mood as her dominant one.

“She must have been desperately annoyed with bores and boobies,” he thought.  “I do not wonder she protects herself by distance.  I am afraid I shall never get within her lines again,—­not even if I should try slow and regular approaches, and bombard her with bouquets for a twelvemonth.”

“But, Wade,” says Peter, “all this time you have not told us what good luck sends you here to be wrecked on the hospitable shores of my Point.”

“I live here.  I am chief cook and confectioner where you see the smoking top of that tall chimney up-stream.”

“Why, of course!  What a dolt I was, not to think of you, when Churm told us an Athlete, a Brave, a Sage, and a Gentleman was the Superintendent of Dunderbunk; but said we must find his name out for ourselves.  You remember, Mary.  Miss Damer is Mr. Churm’s ward.”

She acknowledged with a cool bow that she did remember her guardian’s character of Wade.

“You do not say, Peter,” says Mrs. Skerrett, with a bright little look at the other lady, “why Mr. Churm was so mysterious about Mr. Wade.”