to ask me whom I wanted, for the pretty lisping flirt who had proposed the game.  After giving me a coquettish little chirrup of a kiss, and telling me my beard scratched, she bade me, on my return, send out to her “Mithter Billy Lovegrove.”  I obeyed her; my youngest nephew retired; and after a couple of seconds, during which Tilly undoubtedly got what she proposed the game for, Billy being a great favorite with the little girls, she came back, pouting and blushing, to announce that he wanted Miss Pilgrim.  That young lady showed no mock-modesty, but arose at once, and laughingly went out to her youthful admirer, who, as I afterward learned, embraced her ardently, and told her he loved her better than any girl in the world.  As he turned to go back, she told him that he might send to her one of her juvenile cousins, Reginald Rumbullion.  Now, whether because on this youthful Rumbullion’s account Billy had suffered the pangs of that most terrible passion, jealousy, or from his natural enjoyment of playing practical jokes destructive of all dignity in his elders, Billy marched into the room, and, having shut the door behind him, paralyzed the crowded parlor by an announcement that Mr. Daniel Lovegrove was wanted.

I was standing at his side, and could feel him tremble,—­see him turn pale.

“Dear me!” he whispered, in a choking voice; “can she mean me?”

“Of course she does,” said I.  “Who else?  Do you hesitate?  Surely you can’t refuse such an invitation from a lady.”

“No, I suppose not,” said he, mechanically.  And amidst much laughter from the disinterested, while the faces of Mrs. Rumbullion and his mother were spectacles of crimson astonishment, he made his exit from the room.  Never in my life did I so much long for that instrument described by Mr. Samuel Weller,—­a pair of patent double-million-magnifying microscopes of hextry power, to see through a deal door.  Instead of this, I had to learn what happened only by report.

Lottie Pilgrim was standing under the hall burners with her elbow on the newel-post, looking more vividly charming than he had ever seen her before at Mrs. Cramcroud’s sociable or elsewhere.  When startled by the apparition of Mr. Daniel Lovegrove instead of the little Rumbullion whom she was expecting,—­she had no time to exclaim or hide her mounting color, none at all to explain to her own mind the mistake that had occurred, before his arm was clasped around her waist, and his lips so closely pressed to hers, that through her soft thick hair she could feel the throbbing of his temples.  As for Daniel, he seemed in a walking dream, from which he waked to see Miss Pilgrim looking into his eyes with utter though not incensed stupefaction,—­to stammer,—­

“Forgive me!  Do forgive me!  I thought you were in earnest.”

“So I was,” she said, tremulously, as soon as she could catch her voice, “in sending for my cousin Reginald.”

“Oh, dear, what shall I do!  Believe me, I was told you wanted me,—­let me go and explain it to mother,—­she’ll tell the rest,—­I couldn’t do it,—­I’d die of mortification.  Oh, that wretched boy Billy!”