"I'm really very much obliged. It is very considerate of you, but my mother is not very well this afternoon, and I feel that I ought not to leave her." Smothering a sick feeling of discouragement, he said, as cheerfully as possible--
"I'm very sorry indeed. Is your mother seriously sick?"
"Oh no, thank you. I presume she will be quite well by morning."
"Won't you, perhaps, go to-morrow afternoon, if she is better? The river road which you admire so much is in all its midsummer glory."
"Thank you. Really; you are quite too good, but I think riding is rather likely to give me the headache lately."
The way she answered him, without being in the least uncivil, left the impression on his mind that he had been duly persistent. There was an awkward silence of a few moments, and he was just a
