long we shall have him in our house. You
have heard all about that, I suppose?" said she, smiling significantly.

Elizabeth smiled too, but shook her head.

"I have heard the name," said she.

"Well, you must not ask me about her. I only know that she gets a good
many letters from Gershom about this time. It is not to be spoken of
yet."

She rose to go, and Elizabeth went with her to the door, and she laughed
to herself as she followed her with her eye down the street. She had
heard Miss Martha Langden's name once. It was on the night when Mr
Maxwell called on his way from the Hill-farm. He had said that he liked
Miss Betsey, and that she reminded him of one of his best friends, Miss
Martha Langden, one who had been his mother's friend when he was a
child.

Miss Elizabeth laughed again as she turned to go into the house, and she
might have laughed all the same, if she had known that the frequent
letters to Miss Martha Langden never went without a little note to some
one very different from Miss Martha. But she did not know this till
long after.

Clifton Holt went back to college again, and Elizabeth prepared for a
quiet winter. She knew that, as in other winters, she would be held
responsible for a certain amount of entertainment to the young people of
the village in the way of gigantic sewing-circles, and no less gigantic
evening parties. But these could not fall often to her turn, and they
were not exciting affairs, even when the whole responsibility of them
fell on herself, as was the case when her brother was away. So it was a
very quiet winter to which she looked forward.

And because she did not dread the utter quiet, as she had done in former
winters, and because she was able to dismiss from her thoughts, with
very little consideration of the matter, a tempting invitation to pass a
month or two in the city of Montreal, she fancied she was drawing near
to that period in a woman's life, when she is supposed to be becoming
content with the existing order of things, when the dreams and hopes,
and expectations vague and sweet, which make so large a part in girlish
happiness, give place to graver and more earnest thoughts of life and
duty, to a juster estimate of what life has to give, and an acquiescent
acceptance of the lot which she has not chosen, but which has come to
her in it. It is not very often that so desirable a state of mind and
heart comes to girls of four-and-twenty. It certainly had