h
enthusiastic and reverent devotion, and to whose love he clung with all
the wild tenacity of a desolate heart--to see her smile, and hear her
speak--to _him_, perhaps; all this rose like a glorious vision before
Harry, and the possibility of its realization sent the light to his eyes
and the color to his face.

The contemplated walk in the hot, dusty streets, with the cross
Betty--(which tyrannical young female, having brought the children, as
it were, under military rule, and being a rigid disciplinarian, seldom
failed to punish some fancied dereliction of duty by sundry shakes and
pinches as they went along)--this prospect, placed beside the bright,
cool picture his fancy had conjured up, seemed more unendurable than
ever. With one quick glance toward the house, to see if that ogre,
having in custody that form a little taller and face a little older and
sadder than his own, was making her appearance, Harry, seized by an
irresistible impulse, and still holding fast the chubby hand that had
taken his so confidingly, bounded from the pavement, dashed across the
road, and both dashed through the garden and into the cosy parlor in a
trice, panting like young racehorses. And there, in the brightest spot
of the snug, bright room, by that bower of a window, sat the sunny-faced
lady whom Harry's childish imagination had exalted into a superior
being. Abashed at having so rudely rushed into that revered presence,
Harry stood shyly by the door, trembling with embarrassment, while his
more active companion, releasing his hand, bounded across the room, and,
clambering up into his mother's lap and putting his arms around her neck
and his rosebud of a mouth close to her ear, commenced a whispered
explanation.

There was something strangely attractive in that mother's face, as she
pushed back the clustering hair, after smilingly listening to the story,
and pressed a fervent kiss upon that baby brow--a look which had never
been on any face for him, but which he had dreamed of at night, and
longed for by day, with a strange, undefined, half-conscious longing. It
was as if he had found something he had been blindly searching,
something for which the solitary heart had vaguely felt an ever-present
need; and the timid child, forgetting his timidity, his awe of the
presence into which he had come--forgetting all but his heart's great
need--in a burst of pathetic longing, more sorrowful than tears, cried:

'Give _me_ a kiss, too, just