rtune of Mr. Cornelius in being chosen to fill
two pulpits in small towns sufficiently near New York to permit his
residence in Queen Street. Mr. Faringfield and Philip were occupied in
setting the former's business upon its feet again, and something like
the old routine had been resumed in the bereaved house. I knew that
all this was due to Phil's imperceptible work. At last there came
great news: Philip was to follow his letter to England, in the next
Bristol vessel after the one that carried it. 'Twas but a brief note
in which he told us this. "There is some news," wrote he, "but I will
save it for word of mouth. Be prepared for a surprise that I shall
bring."

With what expectation we awaited his coming, what conjectures we made
regarding the promised surprise as we talked the news over every
evening in the little parlour where we dined on my return from the
city, I leave my reader to imagine. I had my secret notion that it
concerned Fanny and me.

At the earliest time when a ship might be expected to follow the one
by which the letter came, I began to call every evening, ere starting
for Hampstead, at the inn where the Bristol coaches arrived. Many a
long wait I had in vain when a coach happened to be late. I grew so
accustomed to the disappointment of seeing no familiar figure among
the passengers alighting, that sometimes I felt as if Phil's letter
were a delusion and he never would appear.

But one evening as I stared as usual with the crowd in the coach yard,
and had watched three portly strangers already emerge from the open
door to the steps, and was prepared for the accustomed sinking of my
heart, what did that heart do but give a great bound so as almost to
choke me! There he was in the doorway, the same old Phil, with the
same kindly face. I rushed forward. Before I reached him, he had
turned around toward the inside of the coach, as if he would help some
one out after him. "Some decrepit fellow traveller," thought I, and
looked up indifferently to see what sort of person it might be: and
there, as I live, stepping out from the coach, and taking his offered
hand, was Fanny!

I was at her other side before either of them knew it, holding up my
hand likewise. They glanced at me in the same instant; and Phil's glad
smile came as the accompaniment to Fanny's joyous little cry. I had an
arm around each in a moment; and we created some proper indignation
for a short space by blocking up the way from the sta