heard nothing of the billet. The house was lonely without Fanny Skerrett. Mr. Wade did not come at the appointed hour. Mary was not willing to say to herself how much she regretted his absence.
Had he forgotten the appointment?
No,—that was a thought not to be tolerated.
"A gentleman does not forget," she thought. And she had a thorough confidence, besides, that this gentleman was very willing to remember.
She read a little, fitfully, sang fitfully, moved about the house uneasily; and at last, when it grew late, and she was bored and Wade did not arrive, she pronounced to herself that he had been detained in town.
This point settled, she took her skates, put on her pretty Amazonian hat with its alert feather, and went down to waste her beauty and grace on the ice, unattended and alone.
CHAPTER XI.
CAP'N SMBUSTER'S SKIFF.
It was a busy afternoon at the Dunderbunk Foundry.
The Superintendent had come back with his pocket full of orders. Everybody, from the Czar of Russia to the President of the Guano Republic,
