erun the sight.
Every breath of air was a new perfume. Roses, an innumerable host, ran a
fairy riot about all grounds, and clambered from the lowest door-step to
the highest roof. The oleander, wrapped in one great garment of red
blossoms, nodded in the sun, and stirred and winked in the faint
stirrings of the air The pale banana slowly fanned herself with her own
broad leaf. High up against the intense sky, its hard, burnished foliage
glittering in the sunlight, the magnolia spread its dark boughs, adorned
with their queenly white flowers. Not a bird nor an insect seemed
unmated. The little wren stood and sung to his sitting wife his loud,
ecstatic song, made all of her own name,--Matilda, Urilda, Lucinda,
Belinda, Adaline, Madaline, Caroline, or Melinda, as the case might
be,--singing as though every bone of his tiny body were a golden flute.
The hummingbirds hung on invisible wings, and twittered with delight as
they feasted on woodbine and honeysuckle. The pigeon on the roof-tree
cooed and wheeled about his mate, and swelled his throat, and
tremulously bowed and walked with a smiting step, and arched his
purpling neck, and wheeled and bowed and wheeled again. Pairs of
butterflies rose in straight upward flight, fluttered about each other
in amorous strife, and drifted away in the upper air. And out of every
garden came the voices of little children at play,--the blessedest sound
on earth.

"O Mary, Mary! why should two lovers live apart on this beautiful earth?
Autumn is no time for mating. Who can tell what autumn will bring?"

The revery was interrupted.

"Mistoo Itchlin, 'ow you enjoyin' yo' 'ealth in that beaucheouz weatheh
juz at the pwesent? Me, I'm well. Yes, I'm always well, in fact. At the
same time nevvatheless, I fine myseff slightly sad. I s'pose 'tis
natu'al--a man what love the 'itings of Lawd By'on as much as me. You
know, of co'se, the melancholic intelligens?"

"No," said Richling; "has any one"--

"Lady By'on, seh. Yesseh. 'In the mids' of life'--you know where we ah,
Mistoo Itchlin, I su-pose?"

"Is Lady Byron dead?"

"Yesseh." Narcisse bowed solemnly. "Gone, Mistoo Itchlin. Since the
seventeenth of last; yesseh. 'Kig the bucket,' as the povvub say." He
showed an extra band of black drawn neatly around his new straw hat. "I
thought it but p'opeh to put some moaning--as a species of twibute." He
restored the hat to his head. "You like the tas'e of that, Mistoo
Itchlin?"

Richling could b