“Exquisite—­charming—­enchanting—­paradisaical—­divine!” murmured Sophronia.

“And the rent is only three hundred dollars,” continued the agent.

This latter bit of information aroused my strongest sentiment, and I begged the agent to show us the house at once.

The approach was certainly delightful.  We dashed into the gloom of a mass of spruces, pines, and arbor-vitaes, and stopped suddenly in front of a little, low cottage, which consisted principally of additions, no one of which was after any particular architectural order.  Sophronia gazed an instant; her face assumed an ecstatic expression which I had not seen since the day of our engagement; she threw her arms about my neck, her head drooped upon my bosom, and she whispered: 

“My ideal!”

Then this matchless woman, intuitively realizing that the moment for action had arrived, reassumed her natural dignity, and, with the air of Mrs. Scott Siddons in “Elizabeth,” exclaimed: 

“Enough!  We take it!”

“Hadn’t you better examine the interior first, my love?” I suggested.

“Were the interior only that of a barn,” remarked my consistent mate, “my decision would not be affected thereby.  The eternal unities are never disunited, nor are—­”

“I don’t believe I’ve got the key with me,” said the agent; “but perhaps we can get in through one of the windows.”

The agent tied his horse and disappeared behind the house.  Again Sophronia’s arm encircled me, and she murmured: 

“Oh, Pierre, what bliss!”

“It’s a good way from the station, pet,” I ventured to remark.

Sophronia’s enthusiasm gave place to scorn; she withdrew her affectionate demonstration, and replied: 

“Spoken like a real man!  The practical, always—­the ideal, never!  Once I dreamed of the companionship of a congenial spirit, but, alas!  ’A good way from the station!’ Were I a man, I would, to reside in such a bower, plod cheerily over miles of prosaic clods.”

“And you’d get your shapely boots most shockingly muddy,” I thought, as the agent opened one of the front windows and invited us to enter.

“French windows, too!” exclaimed Sophronia; “oh Pierre!  And see that exquisite old mantel; it looks as if it had been carved from ebony upon the banks of one of the Queen of the Adriatic’s noiseless by-ways.  And these tiny rooms, how cozy—­how like fairy land!  Again I declare, we will take it!  Let us return at once to the city—­how I loathe the thought of treading its noisy thoroughfares again!—­and order our carpets and furniture.”

“Are you sure you won’t be lonesome here, darling?” I asked.  “It is quite a distance from any neighbors.”

“A true woman is never lonesome when she can commune with Nature,” replied Sophronia.  “Besides,” she continued, in a less exalted strain, “I shall have Laura Stanley and Stella Sykes with me most of the time.”