_Grinnidge_: “Well, take off your coat, and pull up to the register, and warm your poor feet.” He puts his hand out over the register. “Confound it! somebody’s got the register open in the next room! You see, one pipe comes up from the furnace and branches into a V just under the floor, and professes to heat both rooms. But it don’t. There was a fellow in there last winter who used to get all my heat. Used to go out and leave his register open, and I’d come in here just before dinner and find this place as cold as a barn. We had a running fight of it all winter. The man who got his register open first in the morning got all the heat for the day, for it never turned the other way when it started in one direction. Used to almost suffocate—warm, muggy days—maintaining my rights. Some piano-pounder in there this winter, it seems. Hear? And she hasn’t lost any time in learning the trick of the register. What kept you so late in the country?” _Ransom_, after an absent-minded pause: “Grinnidge, I wish you would give me some advice.” _Grinnidge_: “You can have all you want of it at the market price.” _Ransom_: “I don’t mean your legal advice.” _Grinnidge_: “I’m sorry. What have you been doing?” _Ransom_: “I’ve been making an ass of myself.” _Grinnidge_: “Wasn’t that rather superfluous?” _Ransom_: “If you please, yes. But now, it you’re capable of listening to me without any further display of your cross-examination wit, I should like to tell you how it happened.” _Grinnidge_: “I will do my best to veil my brilliancy. Go on.” _Ransom_: “I went up to Ponkwasset early in September for the foliage.” _Grinnidge_: “And staid till late in October. There must have been a reason for that. What was her name? Foliage?” _Ransom_, coming up to the corner of the chimney-piece, near which his friend sits, and talking to him directly over the register: “I think you’ll have to get along without the name for the present. I’ll tell you by and by.” As _Mr. Ransom_ pronounces these words, _Miss Reed_, on her side of the partition, lifts her head with a startled air, and, after a moment of vague circumspection, listens keenly. “But she was beautiful. She was a blonde, and she had the loveliest eyes—eyes, you know, that could be funny or tender, just as she chose—the kind of eyes I always liked.” _Miss Reed_ leads forward over the register. “She had one of those faces that always leave you in doubt whether they’re laughing at you, and so keep you in wholesome subjection; but you feel certain that they’re _good_, and that if they did hurt you by laughing at you, they’d look sorry for you afterward. When she walked you saw what an exquisite creature she was. It always made me mad to think I couldn’t _paint_ her walk.” _Grinnidge_: “I suppose you saw a good deal of her walk.” _Ransom_: “Yes; we were off in the woods and fields half the time together.” He takes a turn towards the window.