Well, I kept pretty quiet the rest of the season.

There were dances and sleighing parties, but I stayed away from them, and attended strictly to business.
I don't know but that I might have begun to enjoy some peace of mind, after the winter and part of the spring had passed without any very awful catastrophe having occurred to me; but, some time in the latter part of May, when the roses were just beginning to bloom, and everything was lovely, a pretty cousin from some distant part of the State came to spend a month at our house.

I had never seen her before, and you may imagine how I felt when she rushed at me and kissed me, and called me her dear cousin John, just as if we had known each other all the days of our lives.

I think it was a constant surprise to her to find that I was bashful.

_She_ wasn't a bit so.