orge!" The seaman caught her offered hand, and covered it
with kisses. The lady's cheek, brow, and throat were suffused with the
deepest and most lovely crimson: she gently struggled to release her
captive hand; but, finding that there was just one degree more force
exerted to retain it than she exercised to withdraw it, she prudently
gave up so hopeless a contest, and began very naturally to ask
questions.

"Why, when did you arrive?--how long have you been gone? Oh! it seems an
age since you left us--and how you are tanned!"

"I arrived this morning," at length answered the seaman; the mutual
delight of their meeting rendering him, for a time, as inarticulate as
it did her voluble; "and I have been gone six months. Time has stood
still with me, dearest Julia, I assure you; and besides, I have had such
a tedious passage home, that I began at last to think I was never to be
blessed with another fair wind. I need not ask how you have been during
that time," he continued, fixing his eyes upon her lovely countenance
with unutterable affection.

No woman was ever insensible to a compliment, even an implied one, to
her looks. Julia raised her liquid eyes to his with a blush and a smile
so frank and unreserved, that his six months' absence and tedious
homeward passage he would gladly endure twice ever again to meet.

There are moments in courtship--that part of it, I mean, where neither
party has as yet whispered love to each other, or bothered the old folks
about their consent; before, in short, it has become an "understood
thing" all over town--there are such moments, when the lady throws off
all reserve, and by a look, a smile, a blush, a half-articulate word,
repays her lover for months, if he is fool enough to court so long, of
prudish and affected shyness, past or future. These moments occur but
seldom, even in the most patriarchal courtships, and it is well that it
is so. Love is a fiery steed, and should always be ridden with a curb
bridle, both before and after marriage. (I am sorry that I cannot think
of a nautical metaphor, or I assure you, reader, that I would never have
gone into the stable to look for one.) The ancients, and their opinion
is decisive, ever held the "semi-reducta Venus" the most beautiful.

Leaving these turtles to bill and coo over a cup of tea, and to the
enjoyment of a lover's walk along the lovely banks of the Severn, we
will proceed to enlighten the reader as to who and what they are, an