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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
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