On October 17, 1887, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe stock was quoted at 90-1/2, and the engagement of Mr. John Somerset Allston to Miss Julia Henrietta Bradstreet Noble was announced with all the formality of which Boston is capable on such occasions. It can hardly be said which piece of news created the greater sensation; but many a paterfamilias who had dragged himself home sick at heart from State Street found his family so engrossed in their own private morsel of intelligence that his, with all its consequences of no new bonnets and no Bar Harbor next summer, was robbed of its sting. All was done according to the most established etiquette. Jack Allston had told all the men at his lunch club, and a hundred notes from Miss Noble to her friends and relatives, which she had sat up late for the two preceding nights to write, had been received by the morning post. Jack had sat up later than she had, but only one single note had been the product of his vigils. Unmixed surprise was the first sensation excited as the news spread. It was astonishing that Jack Allston should be engaged to any girl but Lily Carey, and it was not much less so that he should be engaged to Miss Noble. She was a little older than he was, an only child, and an orphan. Her family was good, her connections high, and her fortune just large enough for her to live upon with their help. She was of course invited everywhere, and received the attentions demanded by politeness; but even politeness had begun to feel that it had done enough for her, and that she should perform the social _hara-kiri_ that unmarried women are expected to make at a certain age. She was very plain and had very little to say for herself. Her relatives could say nothing for her except that she was a "nice, sensible girl," a dictum expressed with more energy after her engagement to Jack Allston, when some of the more daring even discovered that she was "distinguished looking." The men had always, from her silence, had a vague opinion that she was stupid, but amiable; the other girls were doubtful on both these points, certain double-edged speeches forcibly recurring to their memory. Their doubts resolved into certainties after her engagement was announced, when she became so very unbearable that they could only, with the Spartan patience shown by young women on such occasions, hold their tongues and hope that it might be a short one. Their sole relief was in discussing the question as to whether Jack Allston had thrown over Lily, or whether she had refused him. Jack was sheepish and shy at being congratulated; Lily was bright and smiling, and in even higher spirits than usual; Miss Noble spoke very unpleasantly to and of Lily whenever she had the chance; but all these points of conduct might and very likely would be the same under either supposition. Parties were pretty evenly balanced, and the wedding was over before they had drifted to any final conclusion.