quaintly and prettily in
different lights. To all outward appearance two perfectly commonplace
children, we were mysteriously united by some kindred association of the
spirit in her and the spirit in me, which not only defied discovery by
our young selves, but which lay too deep for investigation by far older
and far wiser heads than ours.

You will naturally wonder whether anything was done by our elders to
check our precocious attachment, while it was still an innocent love
union between a boy and a girl.

Nothing was done by my father, for the simple reason that he was away
from home.

He was a man of a restless and speculative turn of mind. Inheriting his
estate burdened with debt, his grand ambition was to increase his small
available income by his own exertions; to set up an establishment
in London; and to climb to political distinction by the ladder of
Parliament. An old friend, who had emigrated to America, had proposed
to him a speculation in agriculture, in one of the Western States, which
was to make both their fortunes. My father's eccentric fancy was struck
by the idea. For more than a year past he had been away from us in the
United States; and all we knew of him (instructed by his letters)
was, that he might be shortly expected to return to us in the enviable
character of one of the richest men in England.

As for my poor mother--the sweetest and softest-hearted of women--to see
me happy was all that she desired.

The quaint little love romance of the two children amused and interested
her. She jested with Mary's father about the coming union between the
two families, without one serious thought of the future--without even a
foreboding of what might happen when my father returned. "Sufficient for
the day is the evil (or the good) thereof," had been my mother's motto
all her life. She agreed with the easy philosophy of the bailiff,
already recorded in these pages: "They're only children. There's no
call, poor things, to part them yet a while."

There was one member of the family, however, who took a sensible and
serious view of the matter.

My father's brother paid us a visit in our solitude; discovered what
was going on between Mary and me; and was, at first, naturally enough,
inclined to laugh at us. Closer investigation altered his way of
thinking. He became convinced that my mother was acting like a fool;
that the bailiff (a faithful servant, if ever there was one yet) was
cunningly advancing