for him, and he was to work to win
me."

I could not refrain from shedding a tear. It was all so beautiful, so
far beyond anything I could have hoped. I pressed Aunt Emmy's hand in
silence, and she went on:

"But there were bad seasons, and though he worked and worked, and though
he did get on, still, you could not call it a fortune. And after five
years had passed he wrote to say that he was making a living, and his
uncle had taken him into partnership, and could not I come out to him.
He had built an extra room on purpose for me. Your Uncle Thomas was
terribly angry when the letter came, because he had always been against
my emigrating, and he forbade any further correspondence. Men are very
high-handed, my love, when you come to live with them. We were not
allowed to write after that. Do you know, my dear, I became so
distressed that I had thoughts--I actually contemplated running away to
Australia?"

"Oh! why didn't you?" I groaned. That, of course, was the obvious
solution of the difficulty.

"Very soon after that your Uncle Thomas had his stroke, and after that
of course I could not leave him."

"Could not we do it still?" I suggested. Of course I took for granted
that I should be involved in the elopement, as the confidential friend
who carries a little reticule with jewels in it, and sustains throughout
the spirits of the principal eloper.

"_Now!_" said Aunt Emmy, and for a moment a violent emotion disfigured
her sweet face. "Now. Oh! my child, all this happened fifteen years ago,
when you were a toddling baby."

"I wish to Heaven I had been as old then as I am now," I said with
clenched hands. I felt that I could have vanquished Uncle Thomas and
Uncle Tom, and all this conspiracy against my darling Aunt Emmy's
happiness.

"And is he still--still----?" I ventured.

"I don't know whether he is still--free. I have not heard from him for
fifteen years. Uncle Thomas was very firm about the correspondence. He
is a very decided character, especially since his stroke, and I have
ceased to hear anything at all about him since his mother died twelve
years ago."

To me twelve years ago was as in the time of Noah. Yet here was Aunt
Emmy, to whom it was all as fresh as yesterday.

"When she died," said Aunt Emmy, "she was ill for a long time before,
and I used to go and sit with her. She was fond of me, but she never
quite did your Uncle Thomas justice. When she died she sent me this
ring." She touched the