On arriving at home, Fate continued to prove kind.  Mrs. Penney was inspired to ask the guest to “stop to dinner,” without any hints or gesticulations being necessary, which might have marred the first impression.  Not only did the chickens appear at the table, where no canned food was present, but there was a deep cherry pie as well, which was eaten with peculiar relish by the commercial traveller, accustomed to the awful fare of New England country hotels, where he was often obliged to use his own samples to fill gaps.  He gazed about at the comfortable kitchen, and won Mamma Penney by praising the food and saying that he was raised on a farm.  Father Penney took a hasty bite in the buttery, and soon disappeared to rescue his goods from the highway.  He was always considered something of a drawback to the matrimonial prospects of his daughters; for, as his nose indicated, he had a firm, not to say combative, disposition, and frequently insisted upon having not only the last but the first word upon every subject, so that Fannie regarded his going in the light of a special providence.

After dinner the three other Penney sisters all tried their best to be agreeable, Marie donning a clinging blue gown and walking up and down the piazza watering plants at this unusual hour of the day for his particular benefit, a performance which caused L. Middleton to ask, “Say, did you ever do a vaudeville turn?” And Marie, not knowing whether to take the remark as a criticism or a compliment, preferred to take the latter view and answer in languid tones,—­

“No, but I have acted, and I’ve been seriously advised to go on the stage.”

In the middle of the afternoon, the load of groceries having arrived safely, Fannie’s “hero” took his leave, Papa Penney driving him to the village inn, where he was to unpack his samples.

For a while L. Middleton was a standard topic of conversation among the girls.  They wondered for what L. stood.  Fannie guessed Louis, Marie spitefully suggested that it might be Lucifer, and that was why he didn’t spell it out.  Then as he seemed about fading from the horizon, he reappeared suddenly one crisp October morning, just starting on his eastern fall route, he said, and invited Fanny to go to the County Fair.

Again a period of silence followed.  The sisters remarked that most travelling men were swindlers, etc., but Fannie persistently put violet water on the handkerchief that she tucked under her pillow every night, until, as winter set in, the supply failed.

Then an idea came to her, she took the horseshoe from where it had been hanging over her door, covered its dinginess with two coats of gold paint, cut the legend, “Sweet Violets,” together with the embossed flowers, from the label on the perfume bottle, and pasted them on the horseshoe, which she further ornamented with an enormous ribbon bow, and despatched it secretly to L. Middleton by express a few days before Christmas.