The next day he determined never to call upon the Leightons again; but he had no reason for this; it merely came into a transitory scheme of conduct, of retirement from the society of women altogether; and after dinner he went round to see them.
He asked for the ladies, and they all three received him, Alma not without a surprise that intimated itself to him, and her mother with no appreciable relenting; Miss Woodburn, with the needlework which she found easier to be voluble over than a book, expressed in her welcome a neutrality both cordial to Beaton and loyal to Alma.
"Is it snowing outdo's ?" she asked, briskly, after the greetings were transacted.

"Mah goodness!" she said, in answer to his apparent surprise at the question.

"Ah mahght as well have stayed in the Soath, for all the winter Ah have seen in New York yet." "We don't often have snow much before New-Year's," said Beaton.
"Miss Woodburn is wild for a real Northern winter," Mrs.Leighton explained.
"The othah naght Ah woke up and looked oat of the window and saw all the roofs covered with snow, and it turned oat to be nothing but moonlaght.
Ah was never so disappointed in mah lahfe," said Miss Woodburn.
"If you'll come to St.Barnaby next summer, you shall have all the winter you want," said Alma.
"I can't let you slander St.Barnaby in that way," said Beaton, with the air of wishing to be understood as meaning more than he said.
"Yes ?" returned Alma, coolly.

"I didn't know you were so fond of the climate." "I never think of it as a climate.

It's a landscape.