Then, there was Harry going to call on her the next day!  What ought she to say to him?  On the whole, it was a delicate matter for a young girl of twenty to manage alone.  How she longed to have the counsel of her sister or her mother!  She thought of Mrs. Van Astrachan; but then, again, she did not wish to disturb that good lady’s pleasant, confidential relations with Harry, and tell tales of him out of school:  so, on the whole, she had a restless and uncomfortable night of it.

Mrs. Van Astrachan expressed her surprise at seeing Rose take her place at the breakfast-table the next morning.  “Dear me!” she said, “I was just telling Jane to have some breakfast kept for you.  I had no idea of seeing you down at this time.”

“But,” said Rose, “I gave out entirely, and came away only an hour after you did.  The fact is, we country girls can’t stand this sort of thing.  I had such a terrible headache, and felt so tired and exhausted, that I got Mr. Endicott to bring me away before the ‘German.’”

“Bless me!” said Mr. Van Astrachan; “why, you’re not at all up to snuff!  Why, Polly, you and I used to stick it out till daylight! didn’t we?”

“Well, you see, Mr. Van Astrachan, I hadn’t anybody like you to stick it out with,” said Rose.  “Perhaps that made the difference.”

“Oh, well, now, I am sure there’s our Harry!  I am sure a girl must be difficult, if he doesn’t suit her for a beau,” said the good gentleman.

“Oh, Mr. Endicott is all well enough!” said Rose; “only, you observe, not precisely to me what you were to the lady you call Polly,—­that’s all.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed Mr. Van Astrachan.  “Well, to be sure, that does make a difference; but Harry’s a nice fellow, nice fellow, Miss Rose:  not many fellows like him, as I think.”

“Yes, indeed,” chimed in Mrs. Van Astrachan.  “I haven’t a son in the world that I think more of than I do of Harry; he has such a good heart.”

Now, the fact was, this eulogistic strain that the worthy couple were very prone to fall into in speaking of Harry to Rose was this morning most especially annoying to her; and she turned the subject at once, by chattering so fluently, and with such minute details of description, about the arrangements of the rooms and the flowers and the lamps and the fountains and the cascades, and all the fairy-land wonders of the Follingsbee party, that the good pair found themselves constrained to be listeners during the rest of the time devoted to the morning meal.

It will be found that good young ladies, while of course they have all the innocence of the dove, do display upon emergencies a considerable share of the wisdom of the serpent.  And on this same mother wit and wisdom, Rose called internally, when that day, about eleven o’clock, she was summoned to the library, to give Harry his audience.

Truth to say, she was in a state of excited womanhood vastly becoming to her general appearance, and entered the library with flushed cheeks and head erect, like one prepared to stand for herself and for her sex.