['How delightful!' thought Miss Hobbs; 'he takes me for a boarding-school girl.']
'For a few weeks,' replied she, with a bland smile; and dropping her black lace veil to improve her really fine complexion, knowing, as well as Shakspeare, that
'Beauty, blemished once, is ever lost,
In spite of physic, painting, pains, and cost.'
'Is not this Miss Hobbs, of Peonytown?' suddenly asked the proprietor of the patent leathers, after a few minutes' conversation.
'Why! yes; how did you know?' was Ann Harriet's reply.
'Oh, I had a friend as went to the academy in Peonytown, and he always kept me posted up on the pretty girls; and he talked about you so often, I knew it must be Miss Hobbs,' was the flattering answer.
'How strange!' thought Ann Harriet. 'Well, it proves that I am not wholly overlooked by the young men of my native village.' She did not remember that she carried a little satchel, on which the stranger had read, 'Ann Harriet Hobbs, Peonytown.'
At this time a boy entered the car with a supply of ice water for thirsty passengers. In handing a glassful to Miss Hobbs, he spilled a part on the floor.
'What a waste!' remarked he.
Ann Harriet blushed deep crimson—fat folks are always sensitive—and, with a grave, fat, solemn air, she said: