counselled, admired, scolded, and petted them all. She had
the gayest spirits, and an unerring eye for the ludicrous, and she spoke
her mind with absolute plainness to all comers. Her intuitions were
instantaneous as lightning, and, like that, struck very often in
the wrong place. She was thus extremely unreasonable and altogether
charming.

Such was the lady whom Emilia and Malbone went up to greet,--the one
shyly, the other with an easy assurance, such as she always disliked.
Emilia submitted to another kiss, while Philip pressed Aunt Jane's hand,
as he pressed all women's, and they sat down.

"Now begin to tell your adventures," said Kate. "People always tell
their adventures till tea is ready."

"Who can have any adventures left," said Philip, "after such letters as
I wrote you all?"

"Of which we got precisely one!" said Kate. "That made it such an event,
after we had wondered in what part of the globe you might be looking
for the post-office! It was like finding a letter in a bottle, or
disentangling a person from the Dark Ages."

"I was at Neuchatel two months; but I had no adventures. I lodged with a
good Pasteur, who taught me geology and German."

"That is suspicious," said Kate. "Had he a daughter passing fair?"

"Indeed he had."

"And you taught her English? That is what these beguiling youths always
do in novels."

"Yes."

"What was her name?"

"Lili."

"What a pretty name! How old was she?"

"She was six."

"O Philip!" cried Kate; "but I might have known it. Did she love you
very much?"

Hope looked up, her eyes full of mild reproach at the possibility of
doubting any child's love for Philip. He had been her betrothed for more
than a year, during which time she had habitually seen him wooing every
child he had met as if it were a woman,--which, for Philip, was saying
a great deal. Happily they had in common the one trait of perfect
amiability, and she knew no more how to be jealous than he to be
constant.

"Lili was easily won," he said. "Other things being equal, people of six
prefer that man who is tallest."

"Philip is not so very tall," said the eldest of the boys, who was
listening eagerly, and growing rapidly.

"No," said Philip, meekly. "But then the Pasteur was short, and his
brother was a dwarf."

"When Lili found that she could reach the ceiling from Mr. Malbone's
shoulder," said Emilia, "she asked no more."

"Then you knew the pastor's family also, my child," said Au