, making her a
woman-child--before she was but a child; and the fine light now in her
tender eyes, was a light of thought and mind, the mature radiance
of opening intellect, instead of the careless, thoughtless life of
childhood. She had become suddenly much older, the Squire said, since
going to the Bower of Nature even; and as she lay now on her couch,
fronting the dying autumn, the year which whispered faintly even now
of its bright coming in the Spring, promised to make her a "young
lady!"

And as Redbud lay thus, smiling and thinking, who should run in, with
laughing eyes and brilliant countenance, and black curls, rippling
like a midnight stream, but our young friend, Miss Fanny.

Fanny, joyous as a lark--and merrier still at seeing Redbud "down
stairs" again--overflowing, indeed, with mirth and laughter, like a
morn of Spring, and making old Caesar, dozing on the rug, rise up and
whine.

Fanny kissed Redbud enthusiastically, which ceremony, as everybody
knows, is, with young ladies, exactly equivalent to shaking hands
among the men; and often indicates as little real good-feeling
slanderous tongues have whispered. No one, however, could have
imagined that there was any affectation in Fanny's warm kiss. The very
ring of it was enough to prove that the young lady's whole heart was
in it, and when she sat down by Redbud and took her white hand, and
patted it against her own, the very tenderest light shone in Miss
Fanny's dancing eyes, and it was plain that she had not exaggerated
the truth, in formerly declaring that she was desperately in love
with Redbud. Ah! that fond old school attachment--whether of boy or
girl--for the close friend of sunny hours; shall we laugh at it? Are
the feelings of our after lives so much more disinterested, pure and
elevated?

So Miss Fanny chatted on with Redbud, telling her a thousand
things, which, fortunately, have nothing to do with our present
chronicle--else would the unfortunate chronicler find his pen laughed
at for its tardy movement. Fanny's rapid flow of laughing and
picturesque words, could no more be kept up with by a sublunary
instrument of record, than the shadow of a darting bird can be caught
by the eager hand of the child grasping at it as it flits by on the
sward.

And in the middle of this flow of words, and just when Fanny makes
a veiled allusion to an elderly "thing," and the propensity of the
person in question, to rob more juvenile young ladies of their