"Guess!"

"I'm so dull," said she, looking bright as a diamond. "Let me think! B. P.? British Poets, perhaps."

"Try nearer home!"

"What are you likely to be thinking of that begins with B. P.?-O, I know! Boiler Plates!"

She looked at him, - innocent as a lamb. Bill looked at her, delighted with her little coquetry. A woman without coquetry is insipid as a rose without scent, as Champagne without bubbles, or as corned beef without mustard.

"It's something I'm thinking of most of the time," says he; "but I hope it's softer than Boiler Plates. B. P. stands for Miss Isabella Purtett."

"Oh!" says Belle, and she skated on in silence.

"You came down with Alonzo Ringdove? Bill asked, suddenly, aware of another pang after a moment of peace.

"He came with me and his sisters," she replied.

Yes; poor Ringdove had dressed himself in his shiniest black, put on his brightest patent-leather boots, with his new swan-necked skates newly strapped over them, and wore his new dove-colored overcoat with the long skirts, on purpose to be lovely in the eyes of Belle on this occasion. Alas, in vain!

"Mr. Ringdove is a great friend of yours, is n't he?" "If you ever came to see me now, you would know who my friends are, Mr. Tarbox."

"Would you be my friend again, if I came, Miss Belle?"

"Again? I have always been so, always, Bill." "Well, then, something more than my friend,

I am trying to be worthy of more, Belle?" "What more can I be?" she said, softly. "My wife."

now that

She curved to the right.

was not to be shaken off.

He followed. To the left. He

"Will you promise me not to say walves instead of valves, Bill?" she said, looking pretty and saucy as could be. "I know, to say W for V is fashionable in the iron business; but I don't like it."

"What a thing a woman is to dodge?" says Bill. "Suppose I told you that men brought up inside of boilers, hammering on the inside against twenty hammering like Wulcans on the outside, get their ears so dumfounded that they can't tell whether they are saying valves or walves, wice or virtue, suppose I told you that, what would

you say, Belle?"

"Perhaps I'd say that you pronounce virtue so well, and act it so sincerely, that I can't make any objection to your other words. If you'd asked me to be your vife, Bill, I might have said I did n't understand; but wife I do understand, and I say

She nodded, and tried to skate off. Bill stuck close to her side.

"Is this true, Belle?" he said, almost doubtfully. "True as truth!"

She put out her hand. He took it, and they skated on together, hearts beating to the rhythm of their movements. The uproar and merriment of the village came only faintly to them. It seemed as if all Nature was hushed to listen to their plighted troth, their words of love renewed, more earnest for long suppression. The beautiful ice spread before them, like their life to come, a pathway untouched by any sorrowful or weary footstep. The blue sky was cloudless. The keen air stirred the pulses like the vapor of frozen wine. The benignant mountains westward kindly surveyed the happy pair, and the sun seemed created to warm and cheer them.

"And you forgive me, Belle?" said the lover. "I feel

as if I had only gone bad to make me know how much better going right is."

"I always knew you would find it out. I never stopped hoping and praying for it."

"That must have been what brought Mr. Wade here." “Oh, I did hate him so, Bill, when I heard of something that happened between you and him! I thought him at brute and a tyrant. I never could get over it, until he told mother that you were the best machinist he ever knew, and would some time grow to be a great inventor."

"I'm glad you hated him. I suffered rattlesnakes and collapsed flues for fear you'd go and love him."

"My affections were engaged," she said with simple seriousness.

"Oh, if I'd only thought so long ago! How lovely you are!" exclaims Bill, in an ecstasy.

And how good! God bless you!"

"And how refined!

so wishful for one

He made up such a wishful mouth, of the pleasurable duties of mouths, that Belle blushed, laughed, and looked down, and as she did so saw that one of her straps was trailing.

"Please fix it, Bill," she said, stopping and kneeling.

Bill also knelt, and his wishful mouth immediately took its chance.

A manly smack and sweet little feminine chirp sounded as their lips met.

Boom! twanging gay as the first tap of a marriage-bell, a loud crack in the ice rang musically for leagues up and down the river. "Bravo!" it seemed to say. "Well done, Bill Tarbox! Try again!" Which the happy fellow did, and the happy maiden permitted.

"Now," said Bill, "let us go and hug Mr. Wade !"

"What! Both of us?" Belle protested. "Mr. Tarbox, I am ashamed of you!"

CHAPTER VII.

WADE DOWN.

THE hugging of Wade by the happy pair had to be done metaphorically, since it was done in the sight of all Dunder

bunk.

He had divined a happy result when he missed Bill Tarbox from the arena, and saw him a furlong away, hand in hand with his reconciled sweetheart.

“I envy you, Bill," said he, "almost too much to put proper fervor into my congratulations."

"Your time will come," the foreman rejoined.

And says Belle, "I am sure there is a lady skating somewhere, and only waiting for you to follow her."

"I don't see her," Wade replied, looking with a mockgrave face up and down and athwart the river. "When you've all gone to dinner, I'll prospect ten miles up and down, and try to find a good matrimonial claim that's not taken."

"You will not come up to dinner?" Belle asked.

"I can hardly afford to make two bites of a holiday," said Wade. "I've sent Perry up for a luncheon. Here he comes with it. So I cede my quarter of your pie, Miss Belle, to a better fellow."

"Oh!" cries Perry, coming up and bowing elaborately. "Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, I believe. Ah, yes! Well, I will mention it up at Albany. I am going to take my Guards up to call on the Governor."

Perry dashed off, followed by a score of Dunderbunk boys, organized by him as the Purtett Guards, and taught to salute him as Generalissimo with military honors.

So many hundreds of turkeys, done to a turn, now began to have an effect upon the atmosphere. Few odors are more subtile and pervading than this, and few more appetiz

ing. Indeed, there is said to be an odd fellow, a strictly American gourmand, in New York, who sits from noon to dusk on Christmas day up in a tall steeple, merely to catch the aroma of roast-turkey floating over the city, - and much good, it is said, it does him.

snubs,

Hard skating is nearly as effective to whet hunger as this gentleman's expedient. When the spicy breezes began to blow soft as those of Ceylon's isle over the river and every whiff talked Turkey, the population of Dunderbunk listened to the wooing and began to follow its several noses beaks, blunts, sharps, piquants, dominants, fines, bulgies, and bifids on the way to the several households which those noses adorned or defaced. Prosperous Dunderbunk had a Dinner, yes, a DINNER, that day, and Richard Wade was gratefully remembered by many over-fed foundry-men and their over-fed families.

Wade had not had half skating enough.

"I'll time myself down to Skerrett's Point," he thought, "and take my luncheon there among the hemlocks."

The Point was on the property of Peter Skerrett, Wade's friend and college comrade of ten years gone. Peter had been an absentee in Europe, and smokes from his chimneys this morning had confirmed to Wade's eyes the rumor of his

return.

Skerrett's Point was a mile below the Foundry. Our hero did his mile under three minutes. How many seconds under, I will not say. I do not wish to make other fellows unhappy.

The Point was a favorite spot of Wade's. Many a twilight of last summer, tired with his fagging at the Works to make good the evil of Whiffler's rule, he had lain there on the rocks under the hemlocks, breathing the spicy methyl they poured into the air. After his day's hard fight, in the dust and heat of the Foundry, with anarchy and unthrift, he used to take the quiet restoratives of Nature, until the mur