who thus enters upon a family right to my
flowers and to the distinction of being the only Miss Cobb; Dilsy, who,
while gathering vegetables about the garden, long ago began to receive
little bundles of quilt pieces thrown down to her with a smile and the
right word from the window above; and Jack, who is to drive us on our
bridal-trip to the Blue Lick Springs, where he hopes to renew his
scientific studies upon the maxillary bones. I have hesitated between
Blue Lick and Mud Lick, though to a man in my condition there can be no
great difference between blue and mud. And I had thought of the
Harrodsburg Springs, but the negro musicians there were lately hurried
off to Canada by the underground railway, out of which fact has grown a
lawsuit for damages between the proprietor and his abolitionist guest.

A few weeks ago I intrusted a secret to Georgiana. I told her that
before she condescended to shine upon this part of the world--now the
heavenlier part--I had been engaged upon certain researches and
discoveries relating to Kentucky birds, especially to the Kentucky
warbler. I admitted that these studies had been wretchedly put aside
under the more pressing necessity of fixing the attention of all my
powers, ornithological and other, upon her garden window. But as I
placed specimens of my notes and drawings in her hand, I remarked
gravely that after our marriage I should be ready to push my work
forward without delay.

All this was meant to give her a delightful surprise; and indeed she
examined the evidences of my undertaking with devouring and triumphant
eagerness. But what was my amazement when she handed them back in
silence, and with a face as white as though as fragrant as a rose.

"I have distressed you, Georgiana!" I cried, "and my only thought had
been to give you pleasure. I am always doing something wrong!"

She closed her eyes and passed her fingers searchingly across her brow,
as we sometimes instinctively try to brush away our cares. Then she
sat looking down rather pitifully at her palms, as they lay in her lap.

"You have shared your secret with me," she said, solemnly, at length.
"I'll share mine with yon. It is the only fear that I have ever felt
regarding our future. It has never left me; and what you have just
shown me fills me with terror."

I sat aghast.

"I am not deceived," she continued; "you have not forgotten nature. It
draws you more powerfully than anything else in the wor