Mr.Ralph Ashley several times stated his willingness to subscribe to any views, opinions or conclusions which Miss Fanny desired him to, and finally placed his fingers in his ears.
Fanny greeted this manoeuvre with a sudden blow in the laugher's face, from her bouquet; and Redbud, forgetting her disquietude, laughed gaily at the merry cousins.
So they entered, and met the bevy of young school girls on the portico, with whom Mr.Ralph Ashley, in some manner, became instantaneously popular: perhaps partly on account of the grotesque presents he scattered among them, with his gay, joyous laughter.

After thus making himself generally agreeable, he looked at the setting sun, and said he must go.

He would, however, soon return, he said, to see his dearest Fanny, the delight of his existence.

And having made this pleasant speech, he went away on his elegant horse, laughing, good-humored, and altogether a very pleasing, graceful-looking cavalier, as the red sunset showered upon his rich apparel and his slender charger all its wealth of ruddy, golden light.
And as he went on thus, so gallant, in the bravery of youth and joy, a young lady, sitting on the sun-lit portico, followed him with her eyes; and leaning her fine brow, with its ebon curls, upon her hand, mused with a sigh and a smile.

And when the cavalier turned round as the trees swallowed him, and waved his hat, with its fine feather, in the golden light, Miss Fanny murmured--"Really, I think--Ralph--has very much--improved!" Which seemed to be a very afflicting circumstance to Miss Fanny, inasmuch as she uttered a deep sigh.
Meanwhile our little Redbud gazed, too, from the brilliantly-illumined portico, toward the golden ocean in the west.