stand up together, and then marries you after his fashion,--much to the
amusement of a grown-up house-maid, whenever she gets a peep at the
performance. And it makes you somewhat proud to hear her called your
wife; and you wonder to yourself, dreamily, if it won't be true some day
or other.

----Fie, Clarence, where is your split sixpence, and your blue ribbon!

Jenny is romantic, and talks of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" in a very touching
manner, and promises to lend you the book. She folds billets in a
lover's fashion, and practises love-knots upon her bonnet-strings. She
looks out of the corners of her eyes very often, and sighs. She is
frequently by herself, and pulls flowers to pieces. She has great pity
for middle-aged bachelors, and thinks them all disappointed men.

After a time she writes notes to you, begging you would answer them at
the earliest possible moment, and signs herself--"your attached Jenny."
She takes the marriage farce of her uncle in a cold way, as trifling
with a very serious subject, and looks tenderly at you. She is very much
shocked when her uncle offers to kiss her; and when he proposes it to
you, she is equally indignant, but--with a great change of color.

Nat says one day in a confidential conversation that it won't do to
marry a woman six months older than yourself; and this, coming from Nat
who has been to London, rather staggers you. You sometimes think that
you would like to marry Madge and Jenny both, if the thing were
possible, for Nat says they sometimes do so the other side of the ocean,
though he has never seen it himself.

----Ah, Clarence, you will have no such weakness as you grow older; you
will find that Providence has charitably so tempered our affections,
that every man of only ordinary nerve will be amply satisfied with a
single wife.

All this time--for you are making your visit a very long one, so that
autumn has come, and the nights are growing cool, and Jenny and yourself
are transferring your little coquetries to the chimney-corner--poor
Charlie lies sick at home. Boyhood, thank Heaven! does not suffer
severely from sympathy when the object is remote. And those letters from
the mother, telling you that Charlie cannot play,--cannot talk even as
he used to do,--and that perhaps his "Heavenly Father will take him away
to be with him in the better world," disturb you for a time only.
Sometimes however they come back to your thought on a wakeful night,
and you dream abou