We couldn't help it, we agreed: Cyrus certainly _was_ a romantic place. There were so many interesting people; so many curious names! Mr. Very Jordano! How could a man be named Very Jordano and not be romantic? His mother was a Miss Very, but his father was--_must_ be--of Italian descent. Look at Mr. Jordano's hair, and eyes, and the way he wore that picturesque cloak, such as no one else in Cyrus would ever think of wearing. Mr. Jordano had no objection to our looking at his hair and eyes and cloak: his Italian aspect was his joy and pride, and he cultivated it sedulously. "A poor scribbler!" he was wont to say of himself. "A poor country editor, sir; but in my veins flows the blood of--h'm! ha! _nimporto!_" and then he would glance over his shoulder mysteriously, as if to see whether he was being followed, and curl his long mustache, and hum "Santa Lucia" as fiercely as that plaintive air can be hummed. He edited the _Centinel_, as I have said, and signed his own articles "Italio." When, as sometimes happened, his spelling of _Centinel_ was criticized, he would say: "It is the spelling used by Sir Walter Scott, sir! what is good enough for the Wizard of the North is good enough for me--tee! tee!" I have left Cheeseman's till the last, but it was first in our hearts and our thoughts. Mr. Ivory Cheeseman's candy shop and kitchen was the delight and the despair of every child in Cyrus. We knew to a nicety the day each kind of candy was made. Monday was peppermint day, Tuesday was devoted to caramels, Wednesday to sticks, Thursday to drops, and so on. We timed our visits accordingly, and I fear we were shameless little beggars, for though we clutched our legitimate "nickel" tight, prepared to surrender it when we had made our choice, we knew very well that if we were "pretty-behaved," Uncle Ivory would probably ask us to taste those lemon drops or to see if that batch of cream ribbon wasn't a little mite better than common. Dear Uncle Ivory! how we loved him, spite of the sharp tongue that was the terror of "slack" or unmannerly children! But this will never do. I am wandering all about Cyrus, shaking hands with everybody--I wish I could!--as if I still lived there, as if this were my own story; whereas, it is the story of Kitty Ross, and it is high time that I brought her in properly, instead of letting her whisk round an occasional corner, as she has hitherto been doing.