want any breakfast, and
only ate two buckwheat cakes, when I always eat six, you know, Uncle
Teddy. Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes, dear, so you couldn't get it out of me if you were to shake me
upside-down like a savings-bank."

"Oh, ain't you mean! That was when I was small I did that. I'll tell you
the secret, though,--that girl and I are going to get married. I mean to
ask her the first chance I get. Oh, isn't she a smasher!"

"My dear Billy, sha'n't you wait a little while to see if you always
like her as well as you do now? Then, too, you'll be older."

"I'm old enough, Uncle Teddy, and I love her dearly! I'm as old as the
kings of France used to be when they got married,--I read it in Abbott's
histories. But there's the clock striking nine! I must run or I shall
get a tardy mark, and, perhaps, she'll want to see my certificate
sometimes."

So saying, he kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast as
his legs could carry him. O Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest neither
the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons buttoning on
his jacket,--omnipotent Love, that, after parents and teachers have
failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a good boy!

With both of my nephews hopelessly enamored, and myself the confidant of
both, I had my hands full. Daniel was generally dejected and
distrustful; Billy buoyant and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to
overcome his bashfulness; was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant
only in bouquets. Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news, told
in his slangy New-York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim,--"Oh,
I'm getting on prime! I got such a smile off her this morning as I went
by the window!" Another day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to
her,--because it was too big to shove in a lamp-post, and she might
catch him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell, and ran away.
Daniel wrote his own valentine; but, despite its originality, that
document gave him no such comfort as Billy got from twenty-five cents'
worth of embossed paper, pink cupids, and doggerel. Finally, Billy
announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy, and got introduced
to his girl.

Shortly after this Lu gave what they call "a little company,"--not a
party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family were
well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate neighborhood.
There was a goodly proportion of young folk, and t