"As long as you will sit out here," said I, to myself, "there will be no in-doors for me." She seemed to read my thoughts, and said: "If you will go on with your smoking, I will wait and ask you some things about Walford.

I dearly love the smell of a good cigar, and father never smokes.

He always keeps them, however, in case of gentlemen visitors." She then went on to talk about some Walford people, and asked me if I knew Mary Talbot.

I replied in the affirmative, for Miss Talbot was a member of our literary society, and the young lady informed me that Mary Talbot had a brother in my school--a fact of which I was aware to my sorrow--and it was on account of this brother that she had first happened to see me.
"See me!" I exclaimed, with surprise.
"Yes," said she.

"I drove over to the village one day this spring, and Mary and I were walking past your school-house, and the door was wide open, for it was so warm, and we stopped so that Mary might point out her brother to me; and so, as we were looking in, of course I saw you." "And you recognized me," I said, "when you saw me at the gardener's house ?" "We call that the lodge," said she.