I started forward gallantly, took the server from aunt's hand, and conveyed it, with almost the grace of a French waiter, across the large kitchen to where the two beautiful beings were resting in the chairs which I had set for them. Unfortunately, being blinded by my bashfulness, I caught my toe in a small hole in aunt's rag carpet, the result being that I very abruptly deposited both glasses of milk, bottom up, in the lap of Blue-Eyes. A feeling of horror overpowered me as I saw that exquisite toilet in ruins--those dainty ruffles, those cunning bows the color of her eyes, submerged in the lacteal fluid. I think a ghastly pallor must have overspread my face as I stood motionless, grasping the server in my clenched hands. What do you think Blue-Eyes said? _This_ is the way she "gave me fits." Looking up prettily to my aunt, she says: "Oh, madam, I am _so_ sorry for your carpet." "Your dress!" exclaimed Aunt Jerusha. "Never mind _that_, madam. It can go to the laundry." "Well, I never!" continued aunt, flying about for a towel, and wiping her off as well as she could; "but John Flutter is so careless. He's _always_ blundering. He means well enough, but he's bashful. You'd think a clerk in a dry-goods store would get over it some time now, wouldn't you? Well, young ladies, I'll get some more milk for you; but I won't trust it in _his_ hands." When Aunt Jerusha let the cat out of the bag about my bashfulness, Blue-Eyes flashed, at me from under her long eyelashes a glance so roguish, so perfectly infatuating, that my heart behaved like a thermometer that is plunged first into a tea-kettle and then into snow; it went up into my throat, and then down into my boots. I still grasped the server and stood there like a revolving lantern--one minute white, another red. Finally my heart settled into my boots. It was evident that fate was against me. I was _doomed_ to go on leading a blundering existence. My admiration for this lovely girl was already a thousand times stronger than any feeling I had ever had for Belle Marigold. Yet how ridiculous I must appear to her. How politely she was laughing at me. The sense of this, and the certainty that I was born to blunder, came home to me with crushing weight. I turned slowly to Aunt Jerusha, who was bringing fresh milk, and said, with a simplicity to which pathos must have given dignity: "Aunt, will you show them the way to Widow Cooper's? I am going to the barn to hang myself," and I walked out. "Is he in earnest?" I heard Blue-Eyes inquire. "Wall, now, I shouldn't be surprised," avowed Aunt Jerusha. "He's been powerful low-spirited lately. You see, ladies, he was born that bashful that life is a burden to him."