“She was Miss Kitty Sutton, of San Francisco, and she was a daughter of old Judge Sutton, of the firm of Pixley and Sutton.”

“A very respectable family,” assented the Duchess.

“I hope she wasn’t a daughter of that loud and vulgar old Mrs. Sutton whom I met at Saratoga, one summer, four or five years ago?” said Dear Jones.

“Probably she was.”

“She was a horrid old woman.  The boys used to call her Mother Gorgon.”

“The pretty Kitty Sutton with whom Eliphalet Duncan had fallen in love was the daughter of Mother Gorgon.  But he never saw the mother, who was in ’Frisco, or Los Angeles, or Santa Fe, or somewhere out West, and he saw a great deal of the daughter, who was up in the White Mountains.  She was traveling with her brother and his wife, and as they journeyed from hotel to hotel, Duncan went with them, and filled out the quartette.  Before the end of the summer he began to think about proposing.  Of course he had lots of chances, going on excursions as they were every day.  He made up his mind to seize the first opportunity, and that very evening he took her out for a moonlight row on Lake Winnipiseogee.  As he handed her into the boat he resolved to do it, and he had a glimmer of a suspicion that she knew he was going to do it, too.”

“Girls,” said Dear Jones, “never go out in a rowboat at night with a young man unless you mean to accept him.”

“Sometimes it’s best to refuse him, and get it over once for all,” said Baby Van Rensselaer.

“As Eliphalet took the oars he felt a sudden chill.  He tried to shake it off, but in vain.  He began to have a growing consciousness of impending evil.  Before he had taken ten strokes—­and he was a swift oarsman—­he was aware of a mysterious presence between him and Miss Sutton.”

“Was it the guardian-angel ghost warning him off the match?” interrupted Dear Jones.

“That’s just what it was,” said Uncle Larry.  “And he yielded to it, and kept his peace, and rowed Miss Sutton back to the hotel with his proposal unspoken.”

“More fool he,” said Dear Jones.  “It will take more than one ghost to keep me from proposing when my mind is made up.”  And he looked at Baby Van Rensselaer.

“The next morning,” continued Uncle Larry, “Eliphalet overslept himself, and when he went down to a late breakfast he found that the Suttons had gone to New York by the morning train.  He wanted to follow them at once, and again he felt the mysterious presence overpowering his will.  He struggled two days, and at last he roused himself to do what he wanted in spite of the spook.  When he arrived in New York it was late in the evening.  He dressed himself hastily and went to the hotel where the Suttons put up, in the hope of seeing at least her brother.  The guardian angel fought every inch of the walk with him, until he began to wonder whether, if Miss Sutton were to take him, the spook would forbid the banns.  At the hotel he saw no