If Snortfrizzle’s puller had been one of the regular bath-chair men they might have made an agreement with him so that he would have kept away from them; but he was a man in livery, with a high hat, who walked very regular, like a high-stepping horse, and who, it was plain enough to see, never had anything to do with common bath-chair men.  Old Snortfrizzle seemed to be smelling a rat more and more—­that is, if it is proper to liken Cupid to such an animal—­and his nose seemed to get purpler and purpler.  I think he would always have kept close to Angelica’s chair if it hadn’t been that he had a way of falling asleep, and whenever he did this his man always walked very slow, being naturally lazy.  Two or three times I have seen Snortfrizzle wake up, shout to his man, and make him trot around a clump of trees and into some narrow path where he thought his daughter might have gone.

Things began to look pretty bad, for the old man had very strong suspicions about Pomeroy, and was so very wide awake when he was awake, that I knew it couldn’t be long before he caught the two together, and then I didn’t believe that Angelica would ever come into these gardens again.

It was yesterday morning that I saw old Snortfrizzle with his chin down on his shirt bosom, snoring so steady that his hat heaved, being very slowly pulled along a shady walk, and then I saw his daughter, who was not far ahead of him, turn into another walk, which led down by the river.  I knew very well that she ought not to turn into that walk, because it didn’t in any way lead to the place where Pomeroy was sitting in his bath-chair behind a great clump of bushes and flowers, with his face filled with the most lively emotions, but overspread ever and anon by a cloudlet of despair on account of the approach of the noontide hour, when Angelica and Snortfrizzle generally went home.

[Illustration:  “Your brother is over there”]

The time was short, and I believed that love’s young dream must be put off until the next day if Angelica could not be made aware where Pomeroy was sitting, or Pomeroy where Angelica was going; so I got right up and made a short cut down a steep little path, and, sure enough, I met her when I got to the bottom.  “I beg your pardon very much, miss,” said I, “but your brother is over there in the entrance to the cave, and I think he has been looking for you.”  “My brother?” said she, turning as red as her ribbons was blue.  “Oh, thank you very much!  Robertson, you may take me that way.”

It wasn’t long before I saw those two bath-chairs alongside of each other, and covered from general observation by masses of blooming shrubbery.  As I had been the cause of bringing them together I thought I had a right to look at them a little while, as that would be the only reward I’d be likely to get, and so I did it.  It was as I thought; things was coming to a climax; the bath-chair men standing with much consideration with their backs to their vehicles, and, united for the time being by their clasped hands, the lovers grew tender to a degree which I would have fain checked, had I been nearer, for fear of notice by passers-by.