Smithers has
already asked me."
It was a beautiful, lovely, sweet lie. I hadn't done anything of the
sort, but I'd meant to, of course, and perhaps Araminta had become a
mind reader. Wilkins got a little flushy around his cheek-bones, and
posted off to Fiametta, but she and Burnham were already en route and
apparently reconciled. So it went with all. Wilkins was left. Even my
sister, who, lacking Wilkins, would have to walk home with the
minister's wife, declined, and the fall of the great man was complete.
Mary Brown was the only one remaining in the field, and when he fled to
her she said she wasn't going home.
"Well, then," said Wilkins, "let me take you to wherever you are going?"
"Thank you," returned Miss Brown, "I'm not going there either," and she
joined Araminta and myself, much to our delight, for we have no secrets
from her. And then it all came out.
The girls had not loved us less, or Wilkins more, but they had resolved
to keep Lent with unusual rigor this year.
_They had sworn us off and taken up Wilkins for penance_.
Hard on Wilkins?
Not a bit of it. He's as conscious of his rectitude and as unconscious
of his unpopularity as ever.
Only he is a little more outspoken about women than he used to be, and
somehow or other he has let it creep out that he "doesn't find them
interesting."
"They can't even learn to dance without tripping a fellow up," says he.
THE MAYOR'S LAMPS
The serpent had crept into Eden.
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