"The little-deceiver!" thought I. "Which way shall we go?" said I, aloud, and very significantly, "shall we take the omnibus?" "I will order the carriage," replied she, with a slight shrug; "I never ride in those omnibusses, one meets with such odd people." "_Never?_" asked I, emphatically. "Certainly, never!" answered she, with much apparent surprise. My drive was a delightful one. How could it be otherwise, with a glorious day surrounding me, and a gloriously beautiful cousin sitting beside me, with whom I could not exactly make up my mind whether to fall desperately _in_ love, or desperately _out_ of love. I, too, such an enthusiastic lover of beauty. But she chose to be so different from what she was at our first meeting--so reserved, that I could not decide whether I most loved or was most indifferent to her. We rode all the morning, and I left her, promising to call again in the evening. I walked the streets until dark, the whole affair vexed me so much--I, such a hater of all mysteries, the most impatient of all breathing mortals. I determined to come at once to an understanding with my perverse little cousin, and to decide at once the puzzling question whether to love or not to love. In the evening I found myself alone with my little tormentor. "Now, sweet Cousin Emily," said I, playfully, "you have been teazing me long enough with your pretty affectation of ignorance and innocence--not but that you are as ignorant as the rest of your sweet sex, and as innocent too--but, I beseech you, lay by this masquerading, you have played possum long enough. I humbly implore of you to be the same to me that you were in our first visit to Fairmount--the earnest, simple-hearted Cousin Emily you then were." "Mr. Lincoln speaks in enigmas; I must confess I do not understand his meaning, nor his elegant allusion to 'playing possum.'" This she said with so much haughtiness, that I was taken all aback. Rallying, however, in a moment I determined not to give up the point.