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“All this time I was pinching my fingers under the table to keep from laughing; but when he stopped, looking to me for a solution of all his troubles, with that ridiculously perplexed face, and I saw uncle Rob’s and aunt Kitty’s faces, it would come, and I fairly shrieked, and rushed from the table into the library, and threw myself into an easy-chair; and I truly never laughed so in my life. I believe I had hysterics at last, and they came in in dismay. Don’t you know what it was, Margaret? Don’t you remember the day, last Easter vacation, when Ann had gone down to Salem with her sister, and papa had four strange gentlemen to dine with him, and I put on one of Ann’s aprons, and waited on the table for fun? I think it was idiotic in me not to have recognized Mr. Bruce before. Only think how much it would have saved us! He was the handsome young Englishman who went to the drawing-room with you and mamma, instead of the library, and then went away early. You remember all about him now, don’t you? I went back to the dining-room, and told the whole story from beginning to end, and if we didn’t enjoy ourselves over it! Poor uncle Rob made himself ill with the extent of his laughter, and Mr. Bruce and I are the best of friends. Did you ever know any thing funnier to happen at Mrs. Walkintwo’s? If you did, do write me. How I shall enjoy telling papa and mamma! There’s Alice coming. Good-by, my dear. But wasn’t he a goose?”

“Knowing,” said Miss Margaret, “that Kitty has been Mrs. Bruce for nearly thirty years, you can imagine what followed. Mr. Bruce made full amends for his rudeness, and after a while it came to their having long walks and talks together. Uncle Rob approved the match; and, when it was time for her to come home, Mr. Bruce wisely concluded to sail from Boston, and to serve as escort to Aunt Kate and Kitty. So he was all ready to ask papa’s consent when he arrived, and it was readily given. He became his father’s American partner, and they were married in a year or so, and settled down in the house we left to-night; for Kitty was always loyal to Boston, like the true Tennant that she is. And they have always been the happiest couple in the world, and Kitty’s little personification of the absent Ann turned out more happily than her reluctant mamma had any idea of.

“And now,” said Miss Margaret, “the storm and the story are both over. It’s nearly twelve, and the fire is low. Suppose we go up stairs.”