"White hands have never waved to me, save occasionally when I have gone a-riding in the Sixth Avenue elevated, but it is my honest belief that my sword would promptly leave its scabbard if the hand ever waved from the ivied tower." She nodded her pleasure in this avowal. For a chimney-doctor I was doing well. In fact, as I submitted to Miss Octavia's examination, I felt equal to charging a brigade single-handed. Something about the woman made it possible and pleasant to be absurd. "If a king or an emperor of Europe should ask you to inspect his chimneys, would you be content to perform your service in the most expeditious and professional manner and depart with a nominal fee?" "Decidedly not, Miss Hollister. On the other hand I should nurse the job for all it was worth, plunder the public treasury, explore the dungeons, make love to the princesses, and free the rightful heir to the throne from his cell beneath the bosom of the lake." My friends at the Hare and Tortoise would have heard this avowal with some surprise, for no man's life had ever been tamer than mine. I am by nature timid, and fall but a little short of being afraid of the dark. Prayers for deliverance from battle, murder, and sudden death cannot be too strongly expressed for me. My answer had, however, pleased Miss Octavia, and she clapped her hands with pleasure. "Cecilia," she cried, "something told me, that afternoon at the Asolando, that my belief in the potential seven was not ill-placed, and now you see that in introducing myself to Mr. Ames at the seventh table from the door, in the seventh shop from Fifth Avenue, I was led to a meeting with a gentleman I had been predestined to know." As we talked further, a servant appeared and laid fresh logs across the still-smouldering fire. This I thought would suggest to Miss Hollister the professional character of my visit; but the fire kindled readily, the smoke rose freely in the flue; and Miss Hollister paid no attention to it other than to ask the man whether the fuel he had taken from a carved box at the right of the hearth was apple-wood from the upper orchard or cherry from a tree which, it appeared, she had felled herself. It was apple-wood, the man informed her, and she continued talking. The merits of chain-armor, I think it was, that held us for half an hour, Cecilia and I listening with respect to what, in my ignorance, seemed a remarkable fund of knowledge on this recondite subject. "We dine at seven, Mr. Ames, and you may amuse yourself as you like until that hour. Cecilia, you may order dinner in the gun-room to-night." "Certainly, Aunt Octavia."