If simple, it was satisfactory, and they parted most amicably. It was past sunset, when the friends arrived at Mr. Read's door. Ida stood upon the steps, watching Carry, as she tripped away into the dusk. Others would have seen only a pretty girl, with a smile like May sunshine;--to the fond eyes that followed her, she was an angel of love, upon whom nothing of evil could gaze without adoration and contrition;--and now the light of a new blessing beaming upon her brow--the blessing of the peace-maker! CHAPTER VII. Spring had departed, and the good citizens of Richmond complained as piteously of the heat, as though every zephyr that awoke for miles around, did not sweep over their seven hills freighted with the perfume of gardens and groves, instead of the reeking odors of a thronged city. And in our day, as then, airy, spacious villas are forsaken, while their infatuated denizens hie away to pay $50 per week, for a genteel sty, six feet by ten; with the privilege of eating such fare, as in the event of its appearance upon their own boards, would find its way back to the place where it was concocted, accompanied by an anathematised warning to the cook;--and of gulping down unwholesomely-copious draughts of a nauseous liquid, which the stomach neither relishes, nor needs. There is dancing "all night, 'till broad day-light," a dusty drive to assist the digestion of a breakfast, one's common sense, no less than the digerent organs assures him is insured against chylifaction; promenading until dinner, which meal is taken in full dress;--another drive, or an enervating siesta, and it is time to dress for supper; then dancing again; and at the end of "the season," the fashionable votaries return, jaded and debilitated, to home and comfort, and tell you, with a ghastly smile, that they have been ruralizing at the "Carburretted, Sulphuretted, Chalybeate Springs." Ruralizing at the Springs! sketching a landscape from an Express train--sleeping in a canal-boat--reciprocating ideas with a talkative woman! Mr. Read came home to tea, on a sultry July evening, with some crotchet in his brain. That could be seen with half an eye; and Josephine was affable to a distressing degree, to coax the stranger into an earlier incubation, than would occur without artificial warmth. The effects of her Eccolodeon were presently apparent. "When does your session close, Josey?" he inquired. "On Friday, sir." "Then you will be on your head to quit town, like everybody else." "I have no solicitude on the subject, sir. I am as indifferent to it, as to many other things people rave about." "You are your father's child, cool and hard!" observed her parent, with a gratified look. "But for a novelty, what say you to a trip to Saratoga?" "I should like it, sir,--if you accompany me." "I have business which takes me in that direction, and I thought, as you are to 'come out' next winter, it would sound well to have made your debut at such a fashionable place."