intment as she clasps
her boy to her bosom and dries his little tearful face, closely pressing
him to a heart whose best hopes are centred in his well-being. Happiness
is in her arms, and he feels her warm breath upon his cheek as she kisses
and fondles him; and anon he is as cheerful as he was, for his playmate of
the day, now returned with his own good-humor, accompanies him for all the
hours he will encourage her to remain; sometimes hiding within the purple
flower of the scented violet, or nodding from beneath the yellow cups of
the cowslip, as the breeze sends her laden with perfume back to him again.
And in such childish play and innocent enjoyment time rolls on, until the
child has reached his ninth year, and becomes the subject and lawful slave
of all the rules in Murray's Grammar, and those who instill them into the
youthful mind. And then the boy finds his early friend (although ready at
all times to share his hours of relaxation) very shy and distant; when
studies are difficult or lessons long, keeping away until the task is
accomplished; but cricket and bat and ball invariably summon her, and then
she is bright and kind as of yore, content to forget old quarrels in
present enjoyment; and as Mordant dreamed, he sighed in his sleep, and the
shadow of Happiness went still further off, as if frightened by his grief.

The picture changes: and now more than twenty years are past since the
time when the boy first saw the light, and he is sitting in the room of a
little cottage. The glass door leading to the garden is open, and the
flowers come clustering in at the windows. The loveliness of the child has
flown, it is true, but in its place a fond mother gazes on the form of a
son whose every feature is calculated to inspire love. The short dark
curls are parted from off his sunburnt forehead, and the bright hazel eyes
(in which merriment predominates) glance quickly toward the door, as if
expecting some one. The book he has been pretending to read lies idly on
his lap, and bending his head upon his hand, his eyes had shut in the
earnestness of his reverie, he does not hear the light footstep which
presently comes stealing softly behind him. The new-comer is a young and
very pretty girl, with a pale Madonna-looking face, seriously thoughtful
beyond her years. She may be seventeen or eighteen, not more. Her hands
have been busy with the flowers in the garden, and now, as she comes up
behind the youth, she plucks the le