ike a machine, striking in now and then in good time and tune, I looked
at Judge Evans, sitting there so serene, self-poised, and cold, and
began to wonder if he had ever been a boy, a young man,--if Mrs. Evans
ever was a girl,--if he was ever in love with her, and what he did when
he was.

I thought of the lock of Emmy's hair which I had observed in John's
writing-desk in days when he was falling in love with her,--of sundry
little movements in which at awkward moments I had detected my grave and
serious gentleman when I had stumbled accidentally upon the pair in
moonlight strolls or retired corners,--and wondered whether the models
of propriety before me had ever been convicted of any such human
weaknesses. Now, to be sure, I could as soon imagine the stately tongs
to walk up and kiss the shovel as conceive of any such bygone effusion
in those dignified individuals. But how did they get acquainted? how
came they ever to be married?

I looked at John, and thought I saw him gradually stiffening and
subsiding into the very image of his father. As near as a young fellow
of twenty-five can resemble an old one of sixty-two, he was growing to
be exactly like him, with the same upright carriage, the same silence
and reserve. Then I looked at Emmy: she, too, was changed,--she, the
wild little pet, all of whose pretty individualities were dear to
us,--that little unpunctuated scrap of life's poetry, full of little
exceptions referable to no exact rule, only to be tolerated under the
wide score of poetic license. Now, as she sat between the two Misses
Evans, I thought I could detect a bored, anxious expression on her
little mobile face,--an involuntary watchfulness and self-consciousness,
as if she were trying to be good on some quite new pattern. She seemed
nervous about some of my jokes, and her eye went apprehensively to her
mother-in-law in the corner; she tried hard to laugh and make things go
merrily for me; she seemed sometimes to look an apology for me to them,
and then again for them to me. For myself, I felt that perverse
inclination to shock people which sometimes comes over one in such
situations. I had a great mind to draw Emmy on to my knee and commence a
brotherly romp with her, to give John a thump on his very upright back,
and to propose to one of the Misses Evans to strike up a waltz, and get
the parlor into a general whirl, before the very face and eyes of
propriety in the corner: but "the spirits" were too s