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LIFE’S LITTLE IRONIES

on, although it would be necessary to pass him as he played. On stealthily glancing ahead at the performer, she found to her relief that his eyes were closed in abandonment to instrumentation, and she strode on boldly, But when closer her step grew timid, her tread convulsed itself more and more accordantly with the time of the melody, till she very nearly danced along. Gaining another glance at him when immediately opposite, she saw that one of his eyes was open, qnizzing her as he smiled at her emotional state. Her gait could not divest itself of its compelled capers till she had gone a long way past the house; and Car’line was unable to shake off the strange infatuation for hours.

After that day, whenever there was to be in the neighborhood a dance to which she could get an invitation, and where Mop Ollamoor was to be the musician, Car'line contrived to be present, though it sometimes involved a walk of several miley; for he did not play so often in Stickleford as eleewhere.

The next evidences of his influence over her were singular enough, and it would require a neurologist to fully explain them. She would be sitting quietly, any evening after dark, in the house of her father, the parish-clerk, which stood in the middle of Stickleford village street, this being the higb-road between Lower Mellstock and Moreford, six miles eastward, Here, without a moment’s warning, and in the midst of a general conversation between her father, sister, and the young man before alluded to, who devotedly wooed ber in ignorance of ler infatuation, ahe would start from her seat in the chimney-corner as if she had received a galvanic shock, and spring convulsively towards the ceiling ; then she would burst into tears, and it was not till some half-hour had passed that she grew calm as usual, Her father, knowing