the deep shade of
the sun-bonnet. For girls' faces can never look so sweet in this
generation as they did to the boys who caught sight of them, hidden
away, precious things, in the obscurity of a tunnel of pasteboard
and calico!

This was not their first love-talk. Were they engaged? Yes, and no. By
all the speech their eyes were capable of in school, and of late by
words, they were engaged in loving one another, and in telling one
another of it. But they were young, and separated by circumstances, and
they had hardly begun to think of marriage yet. It was enough for the
present to love and be loved. The most delightful stage of a love affair
is that in which the present is sufficient and there is no past or
future. And so August hung his elbow around the top of the bay horse's
hames, and talked to Julia.

It is the highest praise of the German heart that it loves flowers and
little children; and like a German and like a lover that he was, August
began to speak of the anemones and the violets that were already
blooming in the corners of the fence. Girls in love are not apt to say
any thing very fresh. And Julia only said she thought the flowers seemed
happy in the sunlight In answer to this speech, which seemed to the
lover a bit of inspiration, he quoted from Schiller the lines:

"Yet weep, soft children of the Spring;
The feelings Love alone can bring
Have been denied to you!"

With the quick and crafty modesty of her sex, Julia evaded this very
pleasant shaft by saying: "How much you know, August! How do you
learn it?"

[Illustration: A TALK WITH A PLOWMAN.]

And August was pleased, partly because of the compliment, but chiefly
because in saying it Julia had brought the sun-bonnet in such a range
that he could see the bright eyes and blushing face at the bottom of
this _camera-oscura_. He did not hasten to reply. While the vision
lasted he enjoyed the vision. Not until the sun-bonnet dropped did he
take up the answer to her question.

"I don't know much, but what I do know I have learned out of your Uncle
Andrew's books."

"Do you know my Uncle Andrew? What a strange man he is! He never comes
here, and we never go there, and my mother never speaks to him, and my
father doesn't often have anything to say to him. And so you have been
at his house. They say he has all up-stairs full of books, and ever so
many cats and dogs and birds and squirrels about. But I thought he never
let anybody go up