"Well, I _am_ a spinster, and not so young as I have been. _I_ ought to apologize for not telling you who I was; but it was so very funny to hear you go on in that sober way to my face, I couldn't spoil it," said the girl, with a look that upset John's repentant gravity; and they laughed together as only the young and happy can. "It is very good of you to take it so kindly, but I assure you it weighed upon my conscience, and it is a great relief to beg pardon," he said, feeling as if they had been friends for years. "Have you been sketching old things ever since?" asked Dolly, changing the conversation with womanly tact. "Yes: I went to several places further on, but didn't find any thing half so good as your chair and tankard. I suppose you are taking the relics to town now?" "All but one." "Which is that?" "The pumpkin hood. It is the only thing my step-mother admires among my treasures, and she would not give it up. You rather admired it, didn't you?" asked Dolly, with her demurest air. "I deserve to be laughed at for my panic," answered John, owning up manfully; then pulled out his sketch-book, with an eye to business even in the middle of a joke. "See here! I tried to get that venerable hood into my sketch, but couldn't quite hit it. Perhaps you can help me." "Let me see them all," said Dolly, taking possession of the book with a most flattering air of interest. "Nothing there but queer or famous things, all a hundred years old at least," began John, quite forgetting his stolen sketch of a pretty girl cleaning a snuffer-tray, which he had worked up with great care the night before. Perhaps this made the book open at that particular page, for, as the words left his lips, Dolly's eyes fell on her own figure, too well done to be mistaken, even if the artist's face had not betrayed him. "What 'queer' or 'famous' _old_ person of the last century is that, please?" she asked, holding it off, and looking at it through her hand, while her lips broke into a smile in spite of her efforts to look unconscious. Knowing that a pretty woman will easily forgive a liberty of that sort, John got out of the scrape handsomely by answering with mock gravity,-- "Oh, that's Madam Hancock, when a girl. Did you never see the famous portrait at Portsmouth?" "No. The dress is rather modern, and not quite in keeping with the antique chair she is sitting in," observed the girl, critically. "That's to be added later. I have to work up things, you know,--a face here, a costume there, and so on: all artists do." "So I see. There's the hood; but it wants a cape," and Dolly turned the leaf, as much amused at his quickness as flattered by his compliment. There were not many sketches as yet, but she admired them all, and, when the book was shut, chatted on about antiquities, feeling quite friendly and comfortable; for there was respect, as well as admiration, in the honest blue eyes, and the young man did not offend as the old one had done.