st. It comes rather
sudden,--and then you haven't seen her. Look, here is her photograph!"
said John, producing one from the most orthodox innermost region,
directly over his heart. "Look there! isn't it beautiful?"

"It _is_ a very sweet face," said Grace, exerting herself to be
sympathetic, and thankful that she could say that much truthfully.

[Illustration: "It _is_ a very sweet face."]

"I can't imagine," said John, "what ever made her like me. You know
she has refused half the fellows in the country. I hadn't the remotest
idea that she would have any thing to say to me; but you see there's
no accounting for tastes;" and John plumed himself, as young gentlemen
do who have carried off prizes.

"You see," he added, "it's odd, but she took a fancy to me the first
time she saw me. Now, you know, Gracie, I never found it easy to get
along with ladies at first; but Lillie has the most extraordinary way
of putting a fellow at his ease. Why, she made me feel like an old
friend the first hour."

"Indeed!"

"Look here," said John, triumphantly drawing out his pocket-book, and
producing thence a knot of rose-colored satin ribbon. "Did you ever
see such a lovely color as this? It's so exquisite, you see! Well, she
always is wearing just such knots of ribbon, the most lovely shades.
Why, there isn't one woman in a thousand could wear the things she
does. Every thing becomes her. Sometimes it's rose color, or lilac,
or pale blue,--just the most trying things to others are what she can
wear."

"Dear John, I hope you looked for something deeper than the complexion
in a wife," said Grace, driven to moral reflections in spite of
herself.

"Oh, of course!" said John: "she has such soft, gentle, winning ways;
she is so sympathetic; she's just the wife to make home happy, to be
a bond of union to us all. Now, in a wife, what we want is just that.
Lillie's mind, for instance, hasn't been cultivated as yours and
Letitia's. She isn't at all that sort of girl. She's just a dear,
gentle, little confiding creature, that you'll delight in. You'll form
her mind, and she'll look up to you. You know she's young yet."

"Young, John! Why, she's seven and twenty," said Grace, with
astonishment.

"Oh, no, my dear Gracie! that is all a mistake. She told me herself
she's only twenty. You see, the trouble is, she went into company
injudiciously early, a mere baby, in fact; and that causes her to have
the name of being older than she is. B