"What a consummate idiot! She thinks me a tyrant, and rude and selfish. She ought to be vexed at me. As if I should make over her tastes, and try to control her. I was rude and hateful and unkind. Contemptible!" And with that he seized his hat and dashed down-stairs into the street. He went straight to a market, bought a peck of onions and ordered them sent home. An unpoetical peace offering, he reflected, but the most appropriate for him under the circumstances. But stop, those were red onions. This fact was brought to his consciousness by observing on the sidewalk a basket of unusually fine white ones; and she had especially wished white onions. Immediately he stepped in and bought a peck of those. As he walked along, filled with the peaceful consciousness of having made some atonement, he spied a wagon filled to the top with clean shiny-skinned, white onions. "They really look attractive," he said to himself. Then there darted into his mind a new idea. What if he should prove to Annette what a magnanimous, self-denying being he really was, and take to eating the obnoxious things himself just to please her; be a philosopher, a stoic, and will to like what he detested? There must be no half-way work about this act of self-abnegation; he would provide a generous supply. Now that he thought of it, autumn was just the time to lay in a supply of vegetables. What had he been thinking of, buying only a peck? Nov, how many was a good quantity—enough to last all winter? That was a conundrum. He had dim memories of ten bushels of this and that stored in his father's cellar. True his father had a large family. But then, they should have a great many visitors. The proprietor of the wagon stared when he heard the order, but his business was to sell onions. If Philip Lyman was complacent before, he was jubilant now in contemplation of his virtues. He bounded up the stairs, resolving to go home at noon, surprise Nettie, and "make up." He was a monster to have left her in such a cold way. He was obliged to abandon that plan, though, having already lost so much time. Annette meantime had been aroused from her despondent mood by the first installment of onions. Onions have healing properties, everybody knows. They began to prove efficacious in this case. Philip wanted to show her that he was sorry, she reasoned, and had taken this way to do it. It was just as delicate and kind as if the onions had been flowers,—she ignored the fact that they were red. While her spirits were being thus soothed and comforted, the second peck of onions arrived. This was perplexing. Why had he done that? Ah! These were white, and he had recollected that she liked white ones. How thoughtful and good! How unselfish and candid and noble to own himself wrong, and she—had been foolish and wicked to get angry at nothing.