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CHAPTER X.
ONLY FOR TO-NIGHT!
On the evening of the 4th of July, Professor Valeyon and Cornelia got
into the wagon, and drove off, behind Dolly, to the boarding-house. It
was a warm, breathless night, and the stars looked brighter and more
numerous than usual.
The boarding-house was one of the largest buildings in town--an
accidental sort of structure, painted white, green-blinded, and
protected, from the two roads at whose intersection it stood, by a
white-washed board-fence, deficient in several places. The house
expanded into no less than four large bay-windows, affording an outlook
to three small rooms upon the ground-floor. The four or five other
larger apartments were forced to pass a gloomy existence behind a
loop-hole or two apiece, which could not have measured over three feet
in any direction.
The two largest rooms lay corner to corner, at right angles to one
another, and communicating by a passage-way through their point of
contact. Who the original genius was who discovered the admirable
facilities this else preposterous arrangement afforded for dances will
remain forever unknown; but the experiment once tried became an
institution as permanent as Abbie herself.
The small triangle of space between the two rooms, which to utilize had
theretofore been an unsolved problem, served admirably as a station for
the band; they could be heard in either apartment equally well.
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