"'I'm in a very distracted state of mind, sis, and I've come to make a clean breast of it to you.'
"'Mercy on us! if you are going to confess your sins, I shall beat a retreat; the catalogue is longer than my patience.'
"'Listen; you know yesterday was one of my days for walking?'
"'Boisterous wind, hey?'
"'Yes; and a man must use his eyes when the gods favor him. Just before me, in Washington-street, I saw such a pair of feet! Now you know pretty feet are my passion, and 'Cinderella's' were not a circumstance to these. So I travelled on behind them, in a state of mute ecstacy, and they might have led me to the Dead Sea, and I shouldn't have stopped to ask any questions!'
"'Did you see her face?'
"'Face?—I didn't think of such a thing. I shouldn't have cared if she hadn't any face. Of course it was pretty; nature wouldn't have perfected those continuations to that degree and left—but no matter, they were 'the greatest' feet for little feet, I ever saw. All of a sudden my goddess vanished into a shoe-store, and I stood gaping in at the window and wishing I was the clerk. Presently, the young man handed her a pair of boots, and going round the counter, down he goes on one knee, and, by the blessed saints! if he didn't take that dear little foot in his lap and try on those boots! The rascal was twice as long about it as he need be, too, for after it was all laced on, he kept 'smoothing out the wrinkles,' as he said, 'on the instep.' St. Crispin! wasn't I furious!'
"'Well—didn't you see her face, all this time?'
"'No, I tell you; she had one of those curs—I beg pardon—curious veils that you women are so fond of playing beau peep with! But her shawl fell off, and you'd better believe there was a figure under it even those feet might be proud to carry.'
"'Well—let's have the denouement.'