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 hour for which we could possibly wait, we seated ourselves upon the hotel piazza and endeavored to appreciate Pike's Peak. It did not seem to us very high, and it did seem uncommonly ugly, in spite of its nightcap of snow. But we looked at it hard for an hour, and then we started up Cascade Avenue in search of the house which was, properly speaking, the goal of our two-thousand-mile pilgrimage. Miss Lamb not having been warned of our approach, John had written a sort of note of introduction in that exaggerated hand which he had adopted in all his correspondence for some months past.

We found the house without difficulty, but we did not find the ladies. Mrs. Ellerton was "not at home," and Miss Lamb was out riding. We left the note and our cards, and turned away very much chagrined. I think we both had confidently expected to see Miss Lamb open the door to us herself, holding a half-finished sonnet in her left hand.

"What idiots we were," said John.