firmly enough, but sister and nephew both
knew right well that kindly tears, long kept back from a sense of
dignity, would drop on the half-worn house-linen, and that in the
solitude of her storeroom she would give vent to those womanly
feelings she deemed it incumbent on her, as head of the family, to
restrain before the rest.

Miss Susannah entertained no such scruples. Inflicting on her nephew a
very tearful embrace, she sobbed out incoherent congratulations on the
decision at which her eldest sister had arrived.

"But we mustn't let the dear girl find it out," said this sensitive,
weak-minded, but generous-hearted lady. "We should make no sort of
difference in our treatment of her, of course, but we must take great
care not to let anything betray us in our manner. I am not good at
concealment, I know, but I will undertake that she never suspects
anything from mine."

The fallacy of this assertion was so transparent that Simon could not
forbear a smile.

"Better make a clean breast of it at once," said he. "Directly there's
a mystery in a family, Aunt Susannah, you may be sure there can be
no union. It need not be put in a way to hurt her feelings. On the
contrary, Aunt Jemima might impress on her that we count on her
assistance to keep the pot boiling. Why, she's saving us pounds and
pounds at this moment. Where should I get such a model for my Fairy
Queen, I should like to know? It ought to be a great picture--a great
picture, Aunt Susannah, if I can only work it out. And where should I
be if she left me in the lurch? No--no; we won't forget the bundle of
sticks. I'll to the maul-stick, and you and Aunt Jemima shall be as
cross as two sticks; and as for Nina, with her bright eyes, and her
pleasant voice, and her merry ways, I don't know what sort of a stick
we should make of her." "A fiddlestick, I should think," said that
young lady, entering the room from the garden window, having heard, it
is to be hoped, no more than Simon's closing sentence. "What are
you two doing here in the dark? It's past eight--tea's ready--Aunt
Jemima's down--and everything's getting cold."

Candles were lit in the next room, and the tea-things laid. Following
the ladies, and watching with a painter's eye the lights and shades as
they fell on Nina's graceful beauty, Simon Perkins felt, not for the
first time, that if she were to leave the cottage, she would carry
away with her all that made it a dear and happy home, depriving him