on her white silk bonnet;
and Elinor thought she never beheld so lovely a creature.

They took leave of Margaret, and walked out together; they rambled
over all Rosamund's favorite haunts--through many a sunny field--by
secret glade or wood-walk, where the girl had wandered so often with
her beloved Clare.

Who now so happy as Rosamund? She had oft-times heard Allan speak
with great tenderness of his sister--she was now rambling, arm in
arm, with that very sister, the "vaunted sister" of her friend, her
beloved Clare.

Not a tree, not a bush, scarce a wild flower in their path, but
revived in Rosamund some tender recollection, a conversation perhaps,
or some chaste endearment. Life, and a new scene of things, were now
opening before her--she was got into a fairy land of uncertain
existence.

Rosamund was too happy to talk much--but Elinor was delighted with
her when she _did_ talk:--the girl's remarks were suggested most of
them by the passing scene--and they betrayed, all of them, the
liveliness of present impulse;--her conversation did not consist in a
comparison of vapid feeling, an interchange of sentiment lip-deep--it
had all the freshness of young sensation in it.

Sometimes they talked of Allan.

"Allan is very good," said Rosamund, "very good _indeed_ to my
grandmother--he will sit with her, and hear her stories, and read to
her, and try to divert her a hundred ways. I wonder sometimes he is
not tired. She talks him to death!"

"Then you confess, Rosamund, that the old lady _does_ tire _you_
sometimes?"

"Oh no, I did not mean _that_--it's very different--I am used to all
her ways, and I can humor her, and please her, and I ought to do it,
for she is the only friend I ever had in the world."

The new friends did not conclude their walk till it was late, and
Rosamund began to be apprehensive about the old lady, who had been
all this time alone.

On their return to the cottage, they found that Margaret had been
somewhat impatient--old ladies, _good old ladies_, will be so at
times--age is timorous and suspicious of danger, where no danger is.

Besides, it was Margaret's bedtime, for she kept very good
hours--indeed, in the distribution of her meals, and sundry other
particulars, she resembled the livers in the antique world, more than
might well beseem a creature of this.

So the new friends parted for that night. Elinor having made Margaret
promise to give Rosamund leave to come and see her the