thoughtful;--not breaking out, like the hoiden, flax-haired Nelly,
into bursts of joy and singing,--but stealing upon your heart with a
gentle and quiet tenderness that diffuses itself throughout the
household like a soft zephyr of summer.

There are friends too yet left, who come in upon your evening hours, and
light up the loitering time with dreamy story of the years that are
gone. How eagerly you listen to some gossiping veteran friend, who with
his deft words calls up the thread of some by-gone years of life; and
with what a careless, yet grateful recognition you lapse, as it were,
into the current of the past, and live over again by your hospitable
blaze the stir, the joy, and the pride of your lost manhood.

The children of friends too have grown upon your march, and come to
welcome you with that reverent deference which always touches the heart
of age. That wild boy Will,--the son of a dear friend,--who but a little
while ago was worrying you with his boyish pranks, has now shot up into
tall and graceful youth, and evening after evening finds him making
part of your little household group.

----Does the fond old man think that _he_ is all the attraction!

It may be that in your dreamy speculations about the future of your
children, (for still you dream,) you think that Will may possibly become
the husband of the sedate and kindly Madge. It worries you to find Nelly
teasing him as she does; that mad hoiden will never be quiet; she
provokes you excessively: and yet she is a dear creature; there is no
meeting those laughing blue eyes of hers without a smile and an embrace!

It pleases you however to see the winning frankness with which Madge
always receives Will. And with a little of your old vanity of
observation you trace out the growth of their dawning attachment. It
provokes you to find Nelly breaking up their quiet _tete-a-tetes_ with
her provoking sallies, and drawing away Will to some saunter in the
garden, or to some mad gallop over the hills.

At length upon a certain summer's day Will asks to see you. He
approaches with a doubtful and disturbed look; you fear that wild Nell
has been teasing him with her pranks. Yet he wears not so much an
offended look as one of fear. You wonder if it ever happened to you to
carry your hat in just that timid manner, and to wear such a shifting
expression of the eye, as poor Will wears just now? You wonder if it
ever happened to you to begin to talk with an old friend