she said one day,
pinching my cheek with a low laugh. "You are so good! I'd no idea you
cared so much about me. By and by, when you get over this lazy fit and
go about as you used to, I shall feel so deserted,--you've no idea! I
believe I will order a little widow's cap, and put it on, and wear it
about,--now, what do you mean by getting up and stalking off to look out
of the window? Fine prospect you must have, with the curtain down!"

It is, to say the least, an uncomfortable state of affairs when you find
yourself drawing within a fortnight of the day on which seven people
have assured you that, you are going to shuffle off this mortal coil. It
is not agreeable to have no more idea than the dead (probably not as
much) of the manner in which your demise is to be effected. It is not in
all respects a cheerful mode of existence to dress yourself in the
morning with the reflection that you are never to half wear out your
new mottled coat, and that this striped neck-tie will be laid away by
and by in a little box, and cried over by your wife; to hear your
immediate acquaintances all wondering why you _don't_ get yourself some
new boots; to know that your partner has been heard to say that you are
growing dull at trade; to find the children complaining that you have
engaged no rooms yet at the beach; to look into their upturned eyes and
wonder how long it is going to take for them to forget you; to go out
after breakfast and wonder how many more times you will shut that front
door; to come home in the perfumed dusk and see the faces pressed
against the window to watch for you, and feel warm arms about your neck,
and wonder how soon they will shrink from the chill of you; to feel the
glow of the budding world, and think how blossom and fruit will crimson
and drop without you, and wonder how the blossom and fruit of life can
slip from you in the time of violet smells and orioles.

April, spattered with showers and dripped upon a little with ineffectual
suns, slid restlessly away from me, and I locked my office door one
night, reflecting that it was the night of the first of May, and that
to-orrow was the second.

I spent the evening alone with my wife. I have spent more agreeable
evenings. She came and nestled at my feet, and the firelight painted her
cheeks and hair, and her eyes followed me, and her hand was in mine; but
I have spent more agreeable evenings.

The morning of the second broke without a cloud. Blue jays f