The door stood open and conveniently near, and I suppose I wanted to see how high the snow had drifted since dark; and, a better reason still, I couldn't afford to let Ralph take my hand off with him; and so I had to go out on the porch just long enough to get it back, while he said: "Ettie Moore says she loves me, and we are going to correspond when I go back to college; and as you know all lovers and their sweethearts must have a confidante to smuggle letters and valentines across the lines, we have both chosen you for ours. Oh, I was so afraid you wouldn't come!" I found the snow had drifted--well, I don't believe I knew how many inches. I have not promised a recital of all my auricular experiences. Enough to say, that in time I settled down into the conviction that it was my special mission to be the receptacle of other people's secrets; and they seemed determined to convince me that they thought so too. So, when Mr. Tennent Tremont happened along and became a candidate for auricular favors, like a tradesman who has gained the self-sustaining ground which has made him indifferent as to custom-seeking, I could afford to be entirely independent about giving a previous promise to keep his secrets for him; and so, dear reader, they are as much yours as mine. When my brother introduced him into our family circle we took him to be a Northern college-chum, met with during his just-returned-from-trip to Washington; for it was in those days when Southern hospitality was as much appreciated as it was liberally bestowed. It was a good time for a modest stranger to come among new faces. We were in the flutter and bustle which a wedding in the family makes, and it gave him an opportunity to get used to us, and left us none to observe him unpleasantly much. But when the wedding was over, and I had made up my week of lost sleep, and he and my brother had kept themselves out of the way on a camp-hunt, for my mother to do up her week of house-cleaning,--it is here that our story proper begins. As we were leaving the breakfast-table one morning my brother caught my dress-sleeve, and, dropping in the rear of Mr. Tennent Tremont, allowed him to find the verandah: "Really, sis, I don't think you are doing the clever thing, quite." "How?" "Why, in not helping me to entertain my friend." "Getting tired of him?" "No, he isn't one of that kind; but, to tell the truth, I am too busy just now to give him the whole of my time." "Too busy turning your own cakes. Yes, I see." "Which is no more than my sister is doing; which reminds me to say that J.B. will call this morning, he desired me to inform you. But, dear sis, we must not be so absorbed in our own love-matters as to give my friend only a moiety of our attention, for, poor fellow! he has one of his own." "So I am to bore him for the sake of relieving you? Is that my role?" "Now stop! He simply wants a lady confidante."