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 go, and perhaps I am apt to mix them up, my head being always full of more important objects.”

“I hear there was a very elegant supper,” said Mrs. Derrington.

“I believe there was. But all supper-time I was talking about the tariff, and the theatre, and the army and navy, and I did not notice the things on the table. I rather think there was ice-cream, and I am almost positive there was jelly.”

“Had you fine music?” inquired Mrs. Derrington.

“It seems to me that I heard music. But I was talking then to Mr. Van Valkenburgh, who has travelled over half the world; mostly pedestrian, poor fellow!”

“He is not a poor fellow,” explained her daughter to Sophia. “He is a rich bachelor, and a great botanist, and entomologist; and when he rambles on foot, it is always from his own choice.”

“Augustina,” said her mother, “do not you recollect we met Mr. Van Valkenburgh somewhere in Europe, when we were travelling with the Tirealls?”

“I never was in Europe,” said Augustina to Sophia. “When mamma went over, she took my sister Isabella, but left me a little girl at boarding-school.”

“So you were a little girl at boarding-school; I remember all about it,” continued Mrs. Brockendale, “and I did take Isabella, because she was grown up. She is married now, poor thing, to a man that never crossed the Atlantic, and never will, and so her going to Europe was of no manner of use. What a strange girl she was. When we were at Venice she would make me go everywhere in a boat—even to church.”

“You could not well go in anything else,” remarked Augustina.

“And then at Venice, she highly offended the showman by ringing the great bell of St. Mark’s.”

“She could not get at it.”

“Then it must have been at St. Peter’s, or St. Paul’s, or else Notre Dame. Any how, she rung a bell.”

“My sister has told me,” said Augustina, turning to Sophia, “that coming out of a village church in England, she took a fancy