and either because she was the most dressed of any person there, or because it had got around who her father was, she felt that she had made an impression on the young men.  In her satisfaction with this, and from her good nature, she was contented to be served with her refreshments after the concert by Mr. March, and to remain joking with him.  She was at her ease; she let her hoarse voice out in her largest laugh; she accused him, to the admiration of those near, of getting her into a perfect gale.  It appeared to her, in her own pleasure, her mission to illustrate to the rather subdued people about her what a good time really was, so that they could have it if they wanted it.  Her joy was crowned when March modestly professed himself unworthy to monopolize her, and explained how selfish he felt in talking to a young lady when there were so many young men dying to do so.

“Oh, pshaw, dyun’, yes!” cried Mela, tasting the irony.  “I guess I see them!”

He asked if he might really introduce a friend of his to her, and she said, Well, yes, if he thought he could live to get to her; and March brought up a man whom he thought very young and Mela thought very old.  He was a contributor to ‘Every Other Week,’ and so March knew him; he believed himself a student of human nature in behalf of literature, and he now set about studying Mela.  He tempted her to express her opinion on all points, and he laughed so amiably at the boldness and humorous vigor of her ideas that she was delighted with him.  She asked him if he was a New-Yorker by birth; and she told him she pitied him, when he said he had never been West.  She professed herself perfectly sick of New York, and urged him to go to Moffitt if he wanted to see a real live town.  He wondered if it would do to put her into literature just as she was, with all her slang and brag, but he decided that he would have to subdue her a great deal:  he did not see how he could reconcile the facts of her conversation with the facts of her appearance:  her beauty, her splendor of dress, her apparent right to be where she was.  These things perplexed him; he was afraid the great American novel, if true, must be incredible.  Mela said he ought to hear her sister go on about New York when they first came; but she reckoned that Christine was getting so she could put up with it a little better, now.  She looked significantly across the room to the place where Christine was now talking with Beaton; and the student of human nature asked, Was she here? and, Would she introduce him?  Mela said she would, the first chance she got; and she added, They would be much pleased to have him call.  She felt herself to be having a beautiful time, and she got directly upon such intimate terms with the student of human nature that she laughed with him about some peculiarities of his, such as his going so far about to ask things he wanted to know from her; she said she never did believe in beating about the bush much.  She had