she sang, with fearful inflections and quavers. Patty's face fell. A feeling of angry disappointment came over her. This picnic was an event in Montfield. What to the belle of the season would be the loss of its most brilliant ball was this privation to Patty. This is a relative world, wherein the magnitude of an object depends upon the position of the eye which observes it; and for the time being the picnic filled the whole field of mental vision of the young people of the village. Nor did it tend to lessen the girl's annoyance that the fault was her own, although she resolutely persisted in thinking that she thought herself not at all responsible, but had transferred the entire blame upon the shoulders of the cavalier who should have invited her, and had not. She wandered restlessly through the house and garden, at last seating herself upon the piazza with a book, upon which she vainly attempted to fix her attention. From above came the voice of Bathalina chanting,-- "'Shun my example!'" "'Shun your example!'" muttered Patty to herself. "I shall shun my own hereafter. I might have known that poky old Tom Putnam wouldn't ask me. It is too mean that I should have to stay at home! He might at least have given me a chance to refuse him, and then I should have known what to count on. He is so intensely aggravating. I don't doubt he took Flora Sturtevant. I've no patience with a man that will let himself be trapped by a flirt like her." And at that moment, raising her eyes, she saw the object of her animadversions--a tall, slender man of two or three and thirty--coming up the walk. He seemed surprised to find her at home. "Good-morning," Mr. Putnam said, in a voice which few persons heard with indifference, so rich and pleasing it was. "I supposed you had gone to the picnic." "You see I haven't." It required no great penetration to see that Patty was out of spirits. The new-comer looked at her keenly. "Thank you, I will sit down for a moment," he said, as if she had invited him to do so. "These steps are very comfortable. Don't trouble to get me a chair." "I had not the faintest intention of doing so," she returned. "Why have you not gone?" he asked, looking up at her curiously from his seat upon the piazza-steps. "I chose to stay at home," she answered shortly. "Conclusive, but impossible. A better reason, please?" "I do not know that it can make any difference to you why I stay at home." "But it does, however ignorant you may be on that point." "Why should it?" "You have not answered me," he said; "but I will be generous, and tell you why. I was coming yesterday to invite you myself, and heard that you were going with Burleigh Blood." "Did you?" she asked, brightening visibly. "That was a lie I told, or rather a lie I didn't tell. How did you hear of it?" "I heard Clarence Toxteth say so. Is your list of questions much longer?"