around these crumbling stones, each May they reared
their broods, each June the clover blossomed, each July the wild
strawberries grew cool and red; all around was youth and life and
ecstasy, and yet the stones bore inscriptions in an unknown language,
and the very graves seemed dead.

And lovelier than all the youth of Nature, little Emilia sat there
in the early light, her girlish existence gliding into that drama of
passion which is older than the buried nations, older than time, than
death, than all things save life and God.

VIII. TALKING IT OVER.

AUNT JANE was eager to hear about the ball, and called everybody into
her breakfast-parlor the next morning. She was still hesitating about
her bill of fare.

"I wish somebody would invent a new animal," she burst forth. "How
those sheep bleated last night! I know it was an expression of shame for
providing such tiresome food."

"You must not be so carnally minded, dear," said Kate. "You must be very
good and grateful, and not care for your breakfast. Somebody says that
mutton chops with wit are a great deal better than turtle without."

"A very foolish somebody," pronounced Aunt Jane. "I have had a great
deal of wit in my life, and very little turtle. Dear child, do not
excite me with impossible suggestions. There are dropped eggs, I might
have those. They look so beautifully, if it only were not necessary to
eat them. Yes, I will certainly have dropped eggs. I think Ruth could
drop them; she drops everything else."

"Poor little Ruth!" said Kate. "Not yet grown up!"

"She will never grow up," said Aunt Jane, "but she thinks she is a
woman; she even thinks she has a lover. O that in early life I had
provided myself with a pair of twins from some asylum; then I should
have had some one to wait on me."

"Perhaps they would have been married too," said Kate.

"They should never have been married," retorted Aunt Jane. "They should
have signed a paper at five years old to do no such thing. Yesterday I
told a lady that I was enraged that a servant should presume to have a
heart, and the woman took it seriously and began to argue with me. To
think of living in a town where one person could be so idiotic! Such a
town ought to be extinguished from the universe."

"Auntie!" said Kate, sternly, "you must grow more charitable."

"Must I?" said Aunt Jane; "it will not be at all becoming. I have
thought about it; often have I weighed it in my mind whether to be