ld ever have
come to call Miss Ursula March "little one!"

But this was not exactly a time for jesting, since, on reading the
letter, I saw the young wife flush an angry red, and then look grave.
Until John, crumpling up the paper, and dropping it almost with a
boyish frolic into the middle of a large rosemary-bush, took his wife
by both her hands, and gazed down into her troubled face, smiling.

"You surely don't mind this, love? We knew it all before. It can make
no possible difference."

"No! But it is so wrong--so unjust. I never believed he dared do
it--to you."

"Hear her, Phineas! She thinks nobody dare do anything ill to her
husband--not even Richard Brithwood."

"He is a--"

"Hush, dear!--we will not talk about him; since, for all his threats,
he can do us no harm, and, poor man! he never will be half as happy as
we."

That was true. So Mr. Brithwood's insulting letter was left to moulder
harmlessly away in the rosemary-bush, and we all walked up and down the
garden, talking over a thousand plans for making ends meet in that
little household. To their young hopefulness even poverty itself
became a jest; and was met cheerfully, like an honest, hard-featured,
hard-handed friend, whose rough face was often kindly, and whose harsh
grasp made one feel the strength of one's own.

"We mean," John said gaily, "to be two living Essays on the Advantages
of Poverty. We are not going to be afraid of it or ashamed of it. We
don't care who knows it. We consider that our respectability lies
solely in our two selves."

"But your neighbours?"

"Our neighbours may think of us exactly what they like. Half the sting
of poverty is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort, and not
for the comments of one's neighbours."

"I should think not," Ursula cried, tossing back her head in merry
defiance. "Besides, we are young, we have few wants, and we can easily
reduce our wants to our havings."

"And no more grey silk gowns?" said her husband, half-fondly,
half-sadly.

"You will not be so rude as to say I shall not look equally well in a
cotton one? And as for being as happy in it--why, I know best."

He smiled at her once more,--that tender, manly smile which made all
soft and lustrous the inmost depths of his brown eyes; truly no woman
need be afraid, with a smile like that, to be the strength, the
guidance, the sunshine of her home.

We went in, and the young mistress showed us her new house; we