COURTING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1917, 16 April 1880, Page 3

COURTING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

He camo up a little late, stepped in withont ringing, and striding softly into the parlor, dropped into an easy chair with the careless grace of a young man who is accustomed to the programme. "By Jove," he Baid to the figure sitting in the dim obscurity of the sofa. " By Jove, I thought I was never going to see you alone again. Your mother never goes away from the house nowadays ; does she, Minnie ?" "Well, not amazingly frequently," cheerfully replied the old lady from the sofa. " Minnie's away so much of the time now, I have to stay in." In the old hickory at the end of the house the moping owl complained to the moon much in its usual style, the katydids never sang more clearly, and the plaintive cry of the whip-poor-will filled the night with poetry, but he didn't hear any of it, all the same. " And, by George," he said to a friend fifteen minutes later, "if I didn't leave my hat on the piano and my cane in the hall, I'm a goat. Think of 'm ? Forget 'em ? Strike me blind if I knew I had any clothes on at all. What I wanted was fresh air, and I wanted about thirty acres of it., and mighty quick, too !"