going to shake hands with the
blushing girl.

"Never mind Nora's roses, Mr. Brudenell; attend to me; I ask did you
expect to find it any livelier here in this poor hut than in your own
princely halls?" said Hannah, as she placed a chair before the fire for
his accommodation.

"A great deal livelier, Hannah," he replied, with boyish frankness, as
he took his seat and spread out his hands before the cheerful blaze. "No
end to the livelier. Why, Hannah, it is always lively where there's
nature, and always dull where there's not! Up yonder now there's too
much art; high art indeed--but still art! From my mother and sisters all
nature seems to have been educated, refined, and polished away. There
we all sat this morning in the parlor, the young ladies punching holes
in pieces of muslin, to sew them up again, and calling the work
embroidery; and there was my mother, actually working a blue lamb on red
grass, and calling her employment worsted work. There was no talk but of
patterns, no fire but what was shut up close in a horrid radiator.
Really, out of doors was more inviting than in. I thought I would just
throw on my cloak and walk over here to see how you were getting along
this cold weather, and what do I find here? A great open blazing
woodfire--warm, fragrant, and cheerful as only such a fire can be! and a
humming wheel and a dancing loom, two cheerful girls looking bright as
two chirping birds in their nest! This _is_ like a nest! and it is worth
the walk to find it. You'll not turn me out for an hour or so, Hannah?"

There was scarcely any such thing as resisting his gay, frank, boyish
appeal; yet Hannah answered coldly:

"Certainly not, Mr. Brudenell, though I fancy you might have found more
attractive company elsewhere. There can be little amusement for you in
sitting there and listening to the flying shuttle or the whirling wheel,
for hours together, pleasant as you might have first thought them."

"Yes, but it will! I shall hear music in the loom and wheel, and see
pictures in the fire," said the young man, settling himself,
comfortable.

Hannah drove her shuttle back and forth with a vigor that seemed to owe
something to temper.

Herman heard no music and saw no pictures; his whole nature was absorbed
in the one delightful feeling of being near Nora, only being near her,
that was sufficient for the present to make him happy. To talk to her
was impossible, even if he had greatly desired to do so; for the