“_Why_, Mr. Cutter!” Miss Euphrosyne cried, “I had no idea that you—you—ever—thought of—is it Clytie?” “No,” said Mr. Cutter, “it isn’t Clytie.” “Is it—is it—” Miss Euphrosyne’s eyes lit up with hope long since extinguished, “is it Aurora?” “No!” Dick Cutter could have been heard three rooms off. “No!” he said, with all his lungs. “It ain’t Clytie, nor it ain’t Aurora, nor it ain’t Flora, nor Melpomene nor Cybele nor Alveolar Aureole nor none of ’em. It’s _YOU_—Y–O–U! I want to marry _you_, and what’s more, I’m going to!” “Oh! oh! oh! oh!” said poor Miss Euphrosyne, and hid her face in her hands. She had never thought to be happy, and now she was happy for one moment. That seemed quite enough for her modest soul. And yet more was to come. For once in his life, Dick Cutter seized the right moment to do the right thing. One hour later, Miss Euphrosyne Bailey was Mrs. Richard Cutter. She did not know quite how it happened. Clytie told her she had been bullied into it. But oh! such sweet bullying! * * * * * “No,” said Mr. Richard Cutter one morning in September of the next year, to Mr. Jack Winfield and his wife, (Miss Aurora Bailey that was,) “I can’t stop a minute. We’re too busy up at the ranch. The Wife has just bought out Wilkinson; and I’ve got to round up all his stock. I’ll see you next month, at Clytie’s wedding. Queer, she should have gone off the last, ain’t it? Euphrosyne and I are going down to Butte City Monday, to buy her a present. Know anybody who wants to pay six per cent. for a thousand?” [Illustration] THE NICE PEOPLE. [Illustration: “_We looked off from the brow of the mountain over fifteen miles of billowing green._”] THE NICE PEOPLE. “They certainly are nice people,” I assented to my wife’s observation, using the colloquial phrase with a consciousness that it was any thing but “nice” English, “and I’ll bet that their three children are better brought up than most of—“ “_Two_ children,” corrected my wife. “Three, he told me.” “My dear, she said there were _two_.” “He said three.” “You’ve simply forgotten. I’m _sure_ she told me they had only two—a boy and a girl.” “Well, I didn’t enter into particulars.” “No, dear, and you couldn’t have understood him. Two children.” “All right,” I said; but I did not think it was all right. As a near–sighted man learns by enforced observation to recognize persons at a distance when the face is not visible to the normal eye, so the man with a bad memory learns, almost unconsciously, to listen carefully and report accurately. My memory is bad; but I had not had time to forget that Mr. Brewster Brede had told me that afternoon that he had three children, at present left in the care of his mother–in–law, while he and Mrs. Brede took their Summer vacation. “Two children,” repeated my wife; “and they are staying with his aunt Jenny.”