me nearing the sun, that was rapidly
paving the lake with quivering gold.

Solemn and serene the distant Alps lifted their glittering domes,
which cut sharply like crystal against the sky that was as deeply,
darkly blue as lapis-lazuli; and behind the white villas dotting the
shore, vineyards bowed in amber and purple fruitage, plentiful as
Eshcol, luscious as Schiraz.

The cool air was burdened with mysterious hints of acacias and roses,
which the dew had stolen from drowsy gardens, and over the gently
rippling waters floated the holy sound of the sweet-tongued bell,
from

..."Where yonder church
Stands up to heaven, as if to intercede
For sinful hamlets scattered at its feet."

Into the house Regina passed slowly, a trifle paler from her matin
reverie; and when she entered the pretty breakfast-room, Mr. Chesley
had just deposited his fruity burden upon the floor.

"Thank you, dear Uncle Orme. Mother will enjoy her peaches when she
knows you gathered them with the dew still upon their down. Go,
finish your dream; Heaven grant it be sweet! No one shall even pass
your door for the next hour, unless shod with velvet, or with
silence. This is the first of mother's birthdays I have had an
opportunity to celebrate, and I wish to surprise her pleasantly. Go
back to sleep."

She stood on tiptoe and lightly kissed his swarthy cheek.

"Unfortunately my brain is not sufficiently vassal to my will, to
implicitly obey its mandates; and dropping on my pillow and falling
into slumber are quite different things. Beside (you need not arch
your eyebrows any higher, when I assure you that), despite my
honourable years, my hearing is as painfully acute as that of the
giant fabled to watch 'Bifrost,' and who 'heard the grass growing in
the fields, and the wool on the backs of young lambs.' Last night,
just as I was lapsing into a preliminary doze, two vagrant
nightingales undertook an opera that brought them to the large myrtle
under my window, where I hoped they had reached the _finale_. But one
of them--the female, I warrant you, from the clatter of her small
tongue (if female nightingales can sing)--audaciously perched on the
stone balcony in front of my open window, and such a tirade of
hemi-demi-semi-quavers never before insulted a sleepy man. I clapped
my hands, but they trilled as if all Persia had sent them a
challenge. Now I am going to take a bath, and since you persisted in
making