"Wouldn't I know he was a school-teacher when I heard him speak like that, even if nobody had ever told me?" said Rose. "Of course I am going to eat this candy that dear Lucy made her own self and gave me. I should be very ungrateful not to, and I love candy, too." "I will send for some to Boston to-morrow," cried Horace, eagerly. Rose regarded him with amazement. "Why, Mr. Allen, you just said you did not approve of candy at all, and here you are proposing to send for some for me," she said, "when I have this nice home-made candy, a great deal purer, because one knows exactly what is in it, and you say I must not eat this." Rose took up a sugared almond daintily and put it to her lips, but Horace was too quick for her. Before she knew what he was about he had dashed it from her hand, and in the tumult the whole box of candy was scattered. Horace trampled on it, it was impossible to say whether purposely or accidentally, in the struggle. Both Rose and Sylvia regarded him with amazement, mixed with indignation. "Why, Mr. Allen!" said Rose. Then she added, haughtily: "Mr. Allen, you take altogether too much upon yourself. You have spoiled my candy, and you forget that you have not the least right to dictate to me what I shall or shall not eat." Sylvia also turned upon Horace. "Home-made candy wouldn't hurt her," she said. "Why, Mr. Allen, what do you mean?" "Nothing. I am very sorry," said Horace. Then he walked away without another word, and entered the house. The girl and the woman stood looking at each other. "What did he do such a thing for?" asked Rose. "Goodness knows," said Sylvia. Rose was quite pale. She began to look alarmed. "You don't suppose he's taken suddenly insane or anything?" said she. "My land! no," said Sylvia. "Men do act queer sometimes." "I should think so, if this is a sample of it," said Rose, eying the trampled candy. "Why, he ground his heel into it! What right had he to tell me I should or should not eat it?" she said, indignantly, again. "None at all. Men are queer. Even Mr. Whitman is queer sometimes." "If he is as queer as that, I don't see how you have lived with him so long. Did he ever make you drop a nice box of candy somebody had given you, and trample on it, and then walk off?" "No, I don't know as he ever did; but men do queer things." "I don't like Mr. Allen at all," said Rose, walking beside Sylvia towards the house. "Not at all. I don't like him as well as Mr. James Duncan." Sylvia looked at her with quick alarm. "The man who wrote you last week?" "Yes, and wanted to know if there was a hotel here so he could come." "I thought--" began Sylvia. "Yes, I had begun the letter, telling him the hotel wasn't any good, because I knew he would know what that meant--that there was no use in his asking me to marry him again, because I never would; but now I think I shall tell him the hotel is not so bad, after all," said Rose. "But you don't mean--"