“Alonzo now once more found himself upon an element that had twice proved destructive to his happiness, but Neptune was propitious, and with gentle breezes wafted him toward his haven of bliss, toward Amaryllis. Alas, when but one day from happiness, a Moorish zebec—”

“Janice!” called a voice.

The effect on the reader and her listener, both of whom were sitting on the floor, was instantaneous. Each started and sat rigidly intent for a moment; then, as the sound of approaching footsteps became audible, one girl hastily slipped a little volume under the counterpane of the bed, while the other sprang to her feet, and in a hurried, flustered way pretended to be getting something out of a tall wardrobe.

Before the one who hid the book had time to rise, a woman of fifty entered the room, and after a glance, cried—

“Janice Meredith! How often have I told thee that it is ungenteel for a female to repose on the floor?”

“Very often, mommy,” said Janice, rising meekly, meantime casting a quick glance at the bed, to see how far its smoothness had been disturbed.

“And still thee continues such unbecoming and vastly indelicate behaviour."

“Oh, mommy, but it is so nice!” cried the girl. “Did n’t you like to sit on the floor when you were fifteen?”

“Janice, thou ’t more careless every day in bed-making,” ejaculated Mrs. Meredith, making a sudden dive toward the bed, as if she desired to escape the question. She smoothed the gay patchwork quilt, seemed to feel something underneath, and the next moment pulled out the hidden volume, which was bound, as the bookseller’s advertisements phrased it, in “half calf, neat, marbled sides.” One stern glance she gave the two red-faced culprits, and, opening the book, read out in a voice that was in itself an impeachment, “The Adventures of Alonzo and Amaryllis!”

There was an instant’s silence, full of omen to the culprits, and then Mrs. Meredith’s wrath found vent.

“Janice Meredith!” she cried. “On a Sabbath morning, when thee shouldst be setting thy thoughts in a fit order for church! And thou, Tabitha Drinker!”

“It ’s all my fault, Mrs. Meredith,” hurriedly asserted Tabitha. “I brought the book with me from Trenton, and ’t was I suggested that we go on reading this morning.”

“Six hours of spinet practice thou shalt have to-morrow, miss,” announced Mrs. Meredith to her daughter, “and this afternoon thou shalt say over the whole catechism. As for thee, Tabitha, I shall feel it my duty to write thy father of his daughter’s conduct. Now hurry and make ready for church.” And Mrs. Meredith started to leave the room.

“Oh, mommy,” cried Janice, springing forward and laying a detaining hand on her mother’s arm in an imploring manner, “punish me as much as you please,—I know ’t was very, very wicked,—but don’t take the book away! He and Amaryllis were just—”

“Not another sight shalt thou have of it, miss. My daughter reading novels, indeed!” and Mrs. Meredith departed, holding the evil book gingerly between her fingers, much as one might carry something that was liable to soil one’s hands.

The two girls looked at each other, Tabitha with a woebegone expression, and Janice with an odd one, which might mean many things. The flushed cheeks were perhaps due to guilt, but the tightly clinched little fists were certainly due to anger, and, noting these two only, one would have safely affirmed that Janice Meredith, meekly as she had taken her mother’s scolding, had a quick and hot temper. But the eyes were fairly starry with some emotion, certainly not anger, and though the lips were pressed tightly together, the feeling that had set them so rigidly was but a passing one, for suddenly the corners twitched, the straight lines bent into curves, and flinging herself upon the tall four-poster bedstead, Miss Meredith laughed as only fifteen can laugh.

“Oh, Tibbie, Tibbie,” she presently managed to articulate, “if you look like that I shall die,” and as the god of Momus once more seized her, she dragged the quilt into a rumpled pile, and buried her face in it, as if indeed attempting to suffocate herself.

“But, Janice, to think that we shall never know how it ended! I could n’t sleep last night for hours, because I was so afraid that Amaryllis would n’t have the opportunity to vindicate herself to—and ’t would have been finished in another day.”

“And a proper punishment for naughty Tibbie Drinker it is,” declared Miss Meredith, sitting up and assuming a judicially severe manner. “What do you mean, miss, by tempting good little Janice Meredith into reading a wicked romance on Sunday?”

“‘Good little Janice!’” cried Tibbie, contemptuously. “I could slap thee for that.” But instead she threw her arms about Janice’s neck and kissed her with such rapture and energy as to overbalance the judge from an upright position, and the two roiled over upon the bed laughing with anything but discretion, considering the nearness of their mentor. As a result a voice from a distance called sharply—

“Janice!”

“O gemini!” cried the owner of that name, springing off the bed and beginning to unfasten her gown,—an example promptly followed by her room-mate.

“Art thou dressing, child?” called the voice, after a pause.

“Yes, mommy,” answered Janice. Then she turned to her friend and asked, “Shall I wear my light chintz and kenton kerchief, or my purple and white striped Persian?”

“Sufficiently smart for a country lass, Jan,” cried her friend.

“Don’t call me country bred, Tibbie Drinker, just because you are a modish city girl.”

“And why not thy blue shalloon?”

“’T is vastly unbecoming.”

“Janice Meredith! Can’t thee let the men alone?”

“I will when they will,” airily laughed the girl.

“Do unto others—” quoted Tabitha.

“Then I will when thee sets me an example,” retorted Janice, making a deep curtsey, the absence of drapery and bodice revealing the straightness and suppleness of the slender rounded figure, which still had as much of the child as of the woman in its lines.

“Little thought they get from me,” cried Tabitha, with a toss of her head.

“‘Tell me where is fancy bred,
In the heart or in the head?’”

hummed Janice. “Of course, one does n’t think about men, Mistress Tabitha. One feels.” Which remark showed perception of a feminine truth far in advance of Miss Meredith’s years.

“Unfeeling Janice!”

“’T is a good thing for the oafs and ploughboys of Brunswick. For there are none better.”

“Philemon Hennion?”

“‘Your servant, marms,’” mimicked Janice, catching up a hair brush and taking it from her head as if it were a hat, while making a bow with her feet widely spread. “‘Having nothing better ter do, I’ve made bold ter come over ter drink a dish of tea with you.’” The girl put the brush under her arm, still further spread her feet, put her hands behind some pretended coat-tails, let the brush slip from under her arms, so that it fell to the floor with a racket, stooped with an affectation of clumsiness which seemed impossible to the lithe figure, while mumbling something inarticulate in an apparent paroxysm of embarrassment,—which quickly became a genuine inability to speak from laughter.

“Janice, thee should turn actress.”

“Oh, Tibbie, lace my bodice quickly, or I shall burst of laughing,” breathlessly begged the girl.

“Janice,” said her mother, entering, “how often must I tell thee that giggling is missish? Stop, this moment.”

“Yes, mommy,” gasped Janice. Then she added, after a shriek and a wriggle, “Don’t, Tabitha!”

“What ails thee now, child? Art going to have an attack of the megrims?”

“When Tibbie laces me up she always tickles me, because she knows I’m dreadfully ticklish.”

“I can’t ever make the edges of the bodice meet, so I tickle to make her squirm,” explained Miss Drinker.

“Go on with thy own dressing, Tabitha,” ordered Mrs. Meredith, taking the strings from her hand. “Now breathe out, Janice.”

Miss Meredith drew a long breath, and then expelled it, instant advantage being taken by her mother to strain the strings. “Again,” she said, holding all that had been gained, and the operation was repeated, this time the edges of the frock meeting across the back.

“It hurts,” complained the owner of the waist, panting, while the upper part of her bust rose and fell rapidly in an attempt to make up for the crushing of the lower lungs.

“I lose all patience with thee, Janice,” cried her mother. “Here when thou hast been given by Providence a waist that would be the envy of any York woman, that thou shouldst object to clothes made to set it off to a proper advantage.”

“It hurts all the same,” reiterated Janice; “and last year I could beat Jacky Whitehead, but now when I try to run in my new frocks I come nigh to dying of breathlessness.”

“I should hope so!” exclaimed her mother. “A female of fifteen run with a boy, indeed! The very idea is indelicate. Now, as soon as thou hast put on thy slippers and goloe-shoes, go to thy father, who has been told of thy misbehaviour, and who will reprove thee for it.” And with this last damper on the “lightness of young people,” as Mrs. Meredith phrased it, she once more left the room. It is a regrettable fact that Miss Janice, who had looked the picture of submission as her mother spoke, made a mouth, which was far from respectful, at the departing figure.

“Oh, Janice,” said Tabitha, “will he be very severe?”

“Severe?” laughed Janice. “If dear dadda is really angry, I’ll let tears come into my eyes, and then he’ll say he’s sorry he hurt my feelings, and kiss me; but if he’s only doing it to please mommy, I’ll let my eyes shine, and then he’ll laugh and tell me to kiss him. Oh, Tibbie, what a nice time we could have if women were only as easy to manage as men!” With this parting regret, Miss Meredith sallied forth to receive the expected reproof.

The lecture or kiss received,—and a sight of Miss Meredith would have led the casual observer to opine that the latter was the form of punishment adopted,—the two girls mounted into the big, lumbering coach along with their elders, and were jolted and shaken over the four miles of ill-made road that separated Greenwood, the “seat,” as the “New York Gazette” termed it, of the Honourable Lambert Meredith, from the village of Brunswick, New Jersey. Either this shaking, or something else, put the two maidens in a mood quite unbefitting the day, for in the moment they tarried outside the church while the coach was being placed in the shed, Miss Drinker’s face was frowning, and once again Miss Meredith’s nails were dug deep into the little palms of her hands.

“Yes,” Janice whispered. “She put it in the fire. Dadda saw her.”

“And we’ll never know if Amaryllis explained that she had ever loved him,” groaned Tabitha.

“If ever I get the chance!” remarked Janice, suggestively.

“Oh, Jan!” cried Tabitha, ecstatically. “Would n’t it be delightsome to be loved by a peasant, and to find he was a prince and that he had disguised himself to test thy love?”

“’T would be better fun to know he was a prince and torture him by pretending you did n’t care for him,” replied Janice. “Men are so teasable.”

“There’s Philemon Hennion doffing his hat to us, Jan.”

“The great big gawk!” exclaimed Janice. “Does he want another dish of tea?” A question which set both girls laughing.

“Janice! Tabitha!” rebuked Mrs. Meredith. “Don’t be flippant on the Sabbath.”

The two faces assumed demureness, and, filing into the Presbyterian meeting-house, their owners apparently gave strict heed to a sermon of the Rev. Alexander McClave, which was later issued from the press of Isaac Collins, at Burlington, under the title of:—

“The Doleful State of the Damned, Especially such as go to Hell from under the Gospel.”