charms.  I had just raised her warm hand to my lips, hoping, after I had kissed it, to engage her in conversation, when the door of a room on the opposite side of the passage opened, and a queer little man, with a hump on his back, and otherwise deformed, issued therefrom, and with a nervous step hurried down stairs, muttering to himself like one lost in his own contemplations.  Bessie, with the suddenness of one surprised, vaulted in an opposite direction, and, ere I had time to cast a glance after her, disappeared down a back stair, leaving her image behind only to haunt my fancy, and make me think there was no one else in this world with whom I could be happy.

A few minutes, and having completed my toilet, I appeared at the supper table, which the blushing Bessie had spread with all the niceties of the season, and was waiting to do the honors.  My appetite was indeed keen, but the flashing of her eyes so troubled my sensitive nature, that I entirely forgot the supper, and began to inquire, half resolved to end my journey here, if mine host could accommodate me for a month.  Bessie heaved a sigh, saying it should be done if she had to give up her own room.  To which I replied that nothing could induce me to give her trouble for my sake; that I would take up my lodgings upon the corn shed, where, with the stars and her charms to occupy my musings, I could be so happy.

When supper was over, Bessie ushered me into a large sitting room, on the left of the hall, and bid me good night.  A large, square table, upon which was a copy of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the New England Cultivator, the New Bedford Mercury, and sundry other papers of good morals, stood in the center of the room.  The walls were papered in bright colors, and the floor was covered with an Uxbridge carpet, the colors of which were green and red, and made fresh by the glare of a spirit lamp that burned upon the table.  A chart of the South Shoal, a map of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and sundry rude drawings in crayon and water colors, hung suspended from the walls.  The air of quiet cheerfulness that pervaded the sitting room, bespoke the care Bessie had bestowed upon it, and the active part she took in the management of the household.  And, too, there was a piano standing open at one end of the room, for Bessie, in addition to having studied Latin and algebra two years at the high school, had taken music lessons of Monsieur Pensin‚, and could play seven tunes right off.

An aged, clerical-looking man, his visage lean and careworn, with his newly-married bride, a simply clad country girl of eighteen, sat at a window, looking out upon a little square, and every few minutes exchanging caresses they imagined were seen by no one else in the room.  Indeed, when they were not caressing, they were whispering in very affectionate proximity.  Once or twice I overheard, “My darling,” and, “You know, my love,” which curt but meaning sentences are much in fashion with persons on a bridal tour, and who set out with the belief that earth has no ill that can disturb the solace of their perhaps weak love.