“Why Ruth, dear, how heated you look!”
Now if any thing is provoking, it is to be told when you are heated, that you look so. But Mrs. Castleton, feeling fresh and cool, seemed quite amused as well as surprised at her friend’s looking so flushed and flurried.
Two stylish young men, strangers, who were to be their fellow-travelers to Trenton, turned their eyes on Ruth at this exclamation of Mrs. Castleton; and poor Ruth, who really was a pretty girl, when not flushed, feeling that she was appearing to no advantage, only colored the more, and grew the hotter for the attention she attracted, while she longed to say, “If I am hot, it’s packing your trunk that has made me so;” but as that would not do very well, she had no alternative but silence, while she saw the strangers glance from her to the delicate, fair, tranquil-looking Mrs. Castleton with looks of admiration that did not tend to pacify her. She had, however, to grow cool in temper and temperament the best way she could. And off the stage started for Trenton.
Two delightful days were passed at the Falls. The stylish young strangers had made Harry Meredith’s acquaintance, and been by him introduced to the party, which they joined. So the girls were in ecstasies. They could have staid there willingly for a month; but their time was limited, as they wanted to be back in time for the ball at West Point; and the young men being, like themselves, bound for Niagara, they were somewhat reconciled at leaving Trenton, which was declared to be the most perfect spot under heaven. “They could live there forever,” etc.; and so the whole party, with its new made addition, returned to Utica again.
“Oh, my bouquet! I left it on the table in the drawing-room!” exclaimed Mrs. Castleton, the next morning, just as they were all seated in the cars. “Do, dear,” turning to her husband, “go and get it for me.”
“It’s of no consequence, Julia,” he replied; “and I have not time.”
“Oh yes, indeed it is,” she urged. “You have plenty of time. Tell the conductor to wait a minute for you.”
“Nonsense, Julia,” he replied, impatiently. “Do you suppose he’d stop if I were to ask him—and I certainly would not ask him if he would.”
But she looked so imploringly, and at the same time so very pretty, that Mr. Sutherland (one of the strangers before mentioned) thought her husband a brute to refuse her, and darted out of the cars, which the next minute were starting off.
“There! Sutherland has lost his place!” some one exclaimed, as the bouquet was thrown in at the window, and fell into Mrs. Castleton’s lap; but a gentleman, putting his head out of the window, said, “No! there he is, jumping on the outside!” “Oh, how dangerous!” cried out two or three voices at once. And one old gentleman drew in his gray head with the quiet remark, “Young men will do these mad things. I only wonder more accidents don’t happen;” and in another minute, Mr. Sutherland, animated and laughing, was making his way through the centre of the car, and as he took his seat, said,