Nothing fascinates a man like a woman's slipper, from its utter incomprehensibility, its astonishing unlikeness to any article subserving the same purpose for his own sex. Eva's slippers always seemed to have a character of their own,--a prankish elfin grace, and these as they stood there seemed instinct with life as two white kittens just ready for a spring. I put two fingers into each of the little wretches and made them caper and dance, and we laughed gayly. "Let me see your boots, Harry?" "There," said I, putting best foot forward, a brand new pair bought for the occasion. "I am wearing them to get used to them, so as to give my whole mind to the solemn services to-morrow." "Oh, you enormous creature!" she said, "you are a perfect behemoth. Fancy now my slippers peeping over the table here and wondering at your boots. I can imagine the woman question discussed between the slippers and the boots." "And I can fancy," said I, "the poor, stumping, well-meaning old boots being utterly perplexed and routed by the elfin slippers. What can poor boots do? They cannot follow them, cannot catch or control them, and if they come down hard on them they ruin them altogether." "And the good old boots nevertheless," said she, "are worth forty pairs of slippers. They can stamp through wet and mud and rain, and come out afterward good as new; and lift the slippers over impossible places. Dear old patient long-suffering boots, let the slippers respect them! But come, Harry, this is the last evening now, and do you know I've some anxiety about our little programme to-morrow? You were not bred in the Church, and you never were married before, and so you ought to be well up in your part beforehand." "I confess," said I, "I feel ignorant and a bit nervous." "Now, I've been a bridesmaid no end of times, and seen all the possibles that may happen under those interesting circumstances, and men are so awkward--their great feet are always sure to step somewhere where they shouldn't, and then they thumb and fumble about the ring, and their gloves always stick to their hands, and it's uncomfortable generally. Now don't, I beg you, disgrace me by any such enormities." "This is what the slippers say to the boots," said I. "Exactly. And here is where the boots do well to take a lesson of the slippers. They are 'on their native heath,' here." "Well, then," said I, "get down the Prayer-book and teach me my proprieties. I will learn my lesson thoroughly."