grass,
"that a good fairy should come to you and tell you that your highest
wish should be fulfilled. What would you then ask?"

"I would ask," cried I, seizing Mabel's hand "that she would give me a
good little wife, with blue eyes and golden hair, whose name should be
Mabel."

Mabel blushed crimson and turned her face away from me to hide her
confusion.

"You would not wish to see things as they are, then," whispered she,
while the sweetest smile stole over her blushing face.

"Oh, no, no!" exclaimed I. "But what would you ask, Mabel?"

"I," answered she, "would ask the fairy to give me a husband who loved
me well, if--if his name was--Jamie."

A little before supper-time we both stole on tip-toe into the
professor's study. He was writing, as usual, and did not notice us.
Mabel went up to his chair from behind and gently put her hands over
his eyes, and asked if he could guess who it was. He, of course,
guessed all the names he could think of, except the right one.

"Papa," said Mabel, at last, restoring to him once more the use of his
eyes, "Jamie and I have something we want to tell you."

"And what is it, my dear?" asked the professor, turning round on his
chair, and staring at us as if he expected something extraordinary.

"I don't want to say it aloud," said Mabel. "I want to whisper it."

"And I, too," echoed I.

And so we both put our mouths, one on each side, to the professor's
ears, and whispered.

"But," exclaimed the old man, as soon as he could recover his breath,
"you must bear in mind that life is not a play,--that--that life is
not what it seems--"

"No, but Mabel _is_," said I.

"Is,--is what?"

"What she seems," cried I.

And then we both laughed; and the professor kissed Mabel, shook my
hand, and at last all laughed.

HOW MR. STORM MET HIS DESTINY.

I.

Huet' dich vor Maegdelein,
Soehnelein, Soehnelein.--HEINE.

I do not know why people always spoke of my friend Edmund Storm as a
confirmed bachelor, considering the fact that he was not far on the
shady side of thirty. It is true, he looked considerably older, and
had to all appearances entered that bloomless and sapless period which
with women is called "uncertain age." Nevertheless, I had a private
conviction that Storm might some fine day shed this dry and shrunken
chrysalis, and emerge in some brilliant and unexpected form. I cannot
imagine what ground I had for such a belief; I only know that I always