I hesitated a second or two and then rushed after Nelly just in time to run against Miss Abigail, who entered the room with a couple of lighted candles.

“Goodness gracious, Tom!” exclaimed Miss Abigail.  “Are you possessed?”

I left her scraping the warm spermaceti from one of her thumbs.

Nelly was in the kitchen talking quite unconcernedly with Kitty Collins.  There she remained until supper-time.  Supper over, we all adjourned to the sitting-room.  I planned and plotted, but could manage in no way to get Nelly alone.  She and the Captain played cribbage all the evening.

The next morning my lady did not make her appearance until we were seated at the breakfast-table.  I had got up at daylight myself.  Immediately after breakfast the carriage arrived to take her to the railway station.  A gentleman stepped from this carriage, and greatly to my surprise was warmly welcomed by the Captain and Miss Abigail, and by Miss Nelly herself, who seemed unnecessarily glad to see him.  From the hasty conversation that followed I learned that the gentleman had come somewhat unexpectedly to conduct Miss Nelly to Boston.  But how did he know that she was to leave that morning?  Nelly bade farewell to the Captain and Miss Abigail, made a little rush and kissed me on the nose, and was gone.

As the wheels of the hack rolled up the street and over my finer feelings, I turned to the Captain.

“Who was that gentleman, sir?”

“That was Mr. Waldron.”

“A relation of yours, sir?” I asked craftily.

“No relation of mine—­a relation of Nelly’s,” said the Captain, smiling.

“A cousin,” I suggested, feeling a strange hatred spring up in my bosom for the unknown.

“Well, I suppose you might call him a cousin for the present.  He’s going to marry little Nelly next summer.”

In one of Peter Parley’s valuable historical works is a description of an earthquake at Lisbon.  “At the first shock the inhabitants rushed into the streets; the earth yawned at their feet and the houses tottered and fell on every side.”  I staggered past the Captain into the street; a giddiness came over me; the earth yawned at my feet, and the houses threatened to fall in on every side of me.  How distinctly I remember that momentary sense of confusion when everything in the world seemed toppling over into ruins.

As I have remarked, my love for Nelly is a thing of the past.  I had not thought of her for years until I sat down to write this chapter, and yet, now that all is said and done, I shouldn’t care particularly to come across Mrs. Waldron’s eldest boy in my afternoon’s walk.  He must be fourteen or fifteen years old by this time—­the young villain!

Chapter Nineteen—­I Become A Blighted Being

When a young boy gets to be an old boy, when the hair is growing rather thin on the top of the old boy’s head, and he has been tamed sufficiently to take a sort of chastened pleasure in allowing the baby to play with his watch-seals—­when, I say, an old boy has reached this stage in the journey of life, he is sometimes apt to indulge in sportive remarks concerning his first love.