“Sit here, Nell,” said Cousin Sol, manœuvring me into a little bank of wild strawberries and mosses, and perching himself upon a stump of a tree beside me. “Now all I ask you to do is to answer one or two questions, and I’ll never bother you any more.” I sat resignedly, with my hands in my lap. “Are you engaged to Lieutenant Hawthorne?” “No!” said I, energetically. “Are you fonder of him than of me?” “No, I’m not.” Sol’s thermometer of happiness up to a hundred in the shade at least. “Are you fonder of me than of him, Nelly?” in a very tender voice. “No.” Thermometer down below zero again. “Do you mean to say that we are exactly equal in your eyes?” “Yes.” “But you must choose between us some time, you know,” said Cousin Sol, with mild reproach in his voice. “I do wish you wouldn’t bother me so!” I cried, getting angry, as women usually do when they are in the wrong. “You don’t care for me much or you wouldn’t plague me. I believe the two of you will drive me mad between you.” Here there were symptoms of sobs on my part, and utter consternation and defeat among the Barker faction. “Can’t you see how it is, Sol?” said I, laughing through my tears at his woe-begone appearance. “Suppose you were brought up with two girls and had got to like them both very much, but had never preferred one to the other, and never dreamed of marrying either, and then all of a sudden you are told you must choose one, and so make the other very unhappy, you wouldn’t find it an easy thing to do, would you?” “I suppose not,” said the student. “Then you can’t blame me.” “I don’t blame you, Nelly,” he answered, attacking a great purple toadstool with his stick. “I think you are quite right to be sure of your own mind. It seems to me,” he continued, speaking rather gaspily, but saying his mind like the true English gentleman that he was, “it seems to me that Hawthorne is an excellent fellow. He has seen more of the world than I have, and always does and says the right thing in the right place, which certainly isn’t one of my characteristics. Then he is well born and has good prospects. I think I should be very grateful to you for your hesitation, Nell, and look upon it as a sign of your good-heartedness.” “We won’t talk about it any more,” said I, thinking in my heart what a very much finer fellow he was than the man he was praising. “Look here, my jacket is all stained with horrid fungi and things. We’d better go after the rest of the party, hadn’t we? I wonder where they are by this time?”