"I seem already to have gotten you, my good sir, whether I will or no," laughed Miss Hemmenshaw. "But, my stars and garters" (mentally added she), "what ever will my brother say? A tanner's grandson coming into the family! and he a Hemmenshaw, and as proud as Lucifer!" "Never mind, Auntie dear," said the smiling fiancée, guessing her thoughts. It will be all right with father when he comes to know Roger; and besides, let us remember that under the 'Star Spangled Banner' we have our 'Vanderbilts,' our 'Goulds,' and our 'Rockefellers;' but no Vere de Veres. And if we had, why, Love laughs at heraldry, and is
"'Its own great loveliness alway.'"
"To-morrow," said Miss Paulina decisively, "we will all dine at Alamo Ranch."
CHAPTER VIII
Through this month of wooing and betrothing at Hilton Ranch, the Koshare, at Alamo, never once remitted its endeavor to hearten the despondent.
The weekly entertainments took their regular course, and were successfully carried on, and, in due time, the fortnightly club convened to listen to the Antiquary's account of "Montezuma and his Time."
And here the Koshare chronicle returns on its track to record that able paper.
"As a consistent Koshare," said Mr. Morehouse, to his eager listeners, "it behooves me to give—without that dry adherence to facts observed by the 'Gradgrind' historian—the charming melodramatic details of that romantic monarch's life and times afforded by the popular Munchausen-like data of the Spanish chroniclers, albeit they have in their entirety, all the fascination, and, sometimes, all the unbelievableness of a fairy tale.
"The Aztec government," prefaced the Antiquary, "was an elective monarchy, the choice always restricted to the royal family.