hours of play in the sunshine, privileges he did not very often
obtain in these latter days.

I was much the better for having lain silently for a time, when he
returned with his hands filled with flowers, his lips smelling of
peppermint-drops, and his eyes, always his finest feature, dancing with
delight.

He had seen Ady, he told me, with eagerness, and she had kissed him, and
tied a string of beads about his neck--red ones--which he displayed; and
"Ady had a comb in her head, and her toof was broke"--touching one of
his own front teeth lightly, so that I knew he was not pointing out any
deficiency in the afore-mentioned comb. From this description, vague as
it was, I identified Ada Greene as the person intended to be described;
for I too had observed the imperfection he made a point of--a broken
tooth, impairing the beauty of otherwise faultless ones.

"And who gave you the flowers, Ernie?" I asked, receiving them from his
generous hands as I spoke, and raising the white roses to my nostrils to
inhale their delicate breath. "Did Ady give you these?"

"No--Angy!" he answered, solemnly.

"Tell me about Angy, Ernie--had she wings?"

"No wings! Poor Angy could not fly. She was walking in the garden with
Adam and Eve, with their clothes on," he said, earnestly.

"Mr. and Mrs. Claude Bainrothe, no doubt," I thought, smiling at the
strange mixture of the real and the ideal--the plates of the old Bible
evidently supplied the latter, from which many of his impressions were
derived--and the practical pair in question the former, quietly
perambulating together.

But "Angy!" Could I doubt for one moment to whom he applied that
celestial title? The face of one of the angels in the transfiguration
did, indeed, resemble Mabel's. I had often remarked and pondered over
it.

"Tell me about Angy, Ernie," I entreated. "O Heaven! to think her hands
have touched these flowers--her sweet face bent above him! Darling,
darling! to be divided and yet so near! It breaks my heart!" and tears
flowed freely while he tried to describe the vision that had so
impressed him, in his earnest way.

"Poor Angy got no wings," he began again; "bu hair, and bu eyes, and bu
dress"--every thing he admired was blue--"and she kissed Ernie and gave
him peppermint-drops. Then Adam and Eve laughed just so"--grinning
wonderfully--"and said, 'Go home, bad, ugly child, with a back on!' Then
Angy pulled flowers and gave Ernie!"

"It is only the little g