The dinner lasted an hour and a half, by which time it was nearly twilight. The ordinary prandial hour of the Whitewoods, as well as of most fashionable New Boston people, was not later than two o'clock in the afternoon, but this had been considered a special occasion on account of the far-off origin of some of the guests, and the meal had therefore commenced at five. On leaving the table the party went into the parlor and had coffee. Then Miss Ravenel thought it wise to propitiate her father's searching eye by quitting the Lieutenant-Colonel with his pleasant worldly ways and his fascinating masculine maturity, and going to visit the greenhouse in company with that pale bit of human celery, John Whitewood. Carter politely stood up to the rack for a while with Miss Whitewood, but, finding it dry fodder to his taste, soon made his adieux. Colburne shortly followed, in a state of mind to question the goodness of Providence in permitting lieutenant-colonels. CHAPTER III. MR. COLBURNE TAKES A SEGAR WITH LIEUTENANT-COLONEL CARTER. As Colburne neared his house he saw the Lieutenant-Colonel standing in the flare of a street lamp and looking up at the luminary with an air of puzzled consideration. With a temperance man's usual lack of charity to people given to wine, the civilian judged that the soldier was disgracefully intoxicated, and, instead of thinking how to conduct him quietly home, was about to pass him by on the other side. The Lieutenant-Colonel turned and recognized the young man. In other states of feeling he would have cut him there and then, on the ground that it was not binding on him to continue a chance acquaintance. But being full at the moment of that comprehensive love of fellow existences which some constitutions extract from inebriating fluids, he said, "Ah! how are you? Glad to come across you again." Colburne nodded, smiled and stopped, saying, "Can I do anything for you?" "Will you smoke?" asked the Lieutenant-Colonel, offering a segar. "But how to light it? there's the rub. I've just broken my last match against this cursed wet lamp-post--never thought of the dew, you know--and was studying the machine itself, to see if I could get up to it and into it." "I have matches," said Colburne. He produced them; they lighted and walked on together. Being a great fancier of good segars, and of moonlit summer walks under New Boston elms, I should like here to describe how sweetly the fragrance of the Havanas rose through the still, dewy air into the interlacing arches of nature's cathedral aisles. The subject would have its charms, not only for the great multitude of my brother smokers, but for many young ladies who dearly love the smell of a segar because they like the creatures who use them. At a later period of this history, if I see that I am likely to have the necessary space and time, I may bloom into such pleasant episodes.