In an instant the whole matter was clear to her, and she saw how Putnam had obtained his knowledge of her costume. The following day she met the lawyer on the street, and stopped him with a little gesture of the hand. "It is hardly worth while to bother you with apologies," she said; "but I shall respect myself a trifle more if I tell you that I have discovered how you knew of my masquerade-dress, and I beg your pardon for so misjudging you." "You do not need to apologize," said he eagerly. "It is I who should"-- "Not at all," she interrupted. "Good-morning." And she walked swiftly away. For the rest of our friends, Burleigh continually urged upon Flossy the desirability of a speedy marriage; Clarence Toxteth had taken his wounded heart, or vanity, to Europe; Mrs. Smithers took possession of Mullen House; and December brooded in a sulky, rainy mood over the land. * * * * * "A green Christmas," Mrs. Sanford said, "makes a full churchyard. I knew we'd have a mild fall when the 21st of September was so mild. Don't you remember, mother? The wind was south-west, and the day very warm." "The weather has truly been very warm this season," replied grandmother Sanford. "I think it must be the weather," continued Mrs. Sanford, "that ails Bathalina. She isn't worth any thing for work now: all she'll do is the heavy talking and light lifting. She seems to lay up her husband's death against the doctor. But, as I told her, Peter wouldn't respond to the medicine; and what could Charles do?" "I know of only one thing Bathalina is good for now," Patty remarked. "She'd make a very ornamental figure in a lunatic-asylum, with her long widow's veil." "She is certainly crazy enough," put in Flossy. "She told me last night that Noah must have been familiar with the Bible, because he gave his sons names out of it, and that that showed how old the Bible was." "There comes Will with the letters," Ease said, running to meet him. "It's as good as eating perennial wedding-cake to see Ease and Will," Flossy laughed. "They are those two souls, you know, that have only a single thought." "Young married couples," Patty returned somewhat cynically, "are apt to be so foolish that a single thought is quite as much as they can get up between them." "You are getting misanthropical," Flossy said. "It isn't becoming. And, so saying, she went to stir up the young couple to see--Oh, here you are!" "Here's a letter for Patty," Will said: "I think it is from Hazard Breck." The letter which he put into his sister's hands was written in a bold, somewhat boyish hand, which always seemed to Patty very like Hazard himself. It was as follows:--