me, Lily?"

"Very! emblematic of a spinster that does not spin, with a white head
and a thin stalk."

"Then the name belies my Lily; as you will see."

The children now finished their feast and betook themselves to dancing,
in an alley smoothed for a croquet-ground and to the sound of a violin
played by the old grandfather of one of the party. While Mrs. Braefield
was busying herself with forming the dance, Kenelm seized the occasion
to escape from a young nymph of the age of twelve, who had sat next to
him at the banquet and taken so great a fancy to him that he began to
fear she would vow never to forsake his side,--and stole away
undetected.

There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us, especially the
mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on our own quiet mood.
Gliding through a dense shrubbery, in which, though the lilacs were
faded, the laburnum still retained here and there the waning gold of its
clusters, Kenelm came into a recess which bounded his steps and invited
him to repose. It was a circle, so formed artificially by slight
trellises, to which clung parasite roses heavy with leaves and flowers.
In the midst played a tiny fountain with a silvery murmuring sound; at
the background, dominating the place, rose the crests of stately trees,
on which the sunlight shimmered, but which rampired out all horizon
beyond. Even as in life do the great dominant passions--love, ambition,
desire of power, or gold, or fame, or knowledge--form the proud
background to the brief-lived flowerets of our youth, lift our eyes
beyond the smile of their bloom, catch the glint of a loftier sunbeam,
and yet--and yet--exclude our sight from the lengths and the widths of
the space which extends behind and beyond them.

Kenelm threw himself on the turf beside the fountain. From afar came the
whoop and the laugh of the children in their sports or their dance. At
the distance their joy did not sadden him--he marveled why; and thus, in
musing reverie, thought to explain the why to himself.

"The poet," so ran his lazy thinking, "has told us that 'distance lends
enchantment to the view,' and thus compares to the charm of distance the
illusion of hope. But the poet narrows the scope of his own
illustration. Distance lends enchantment to the ear as well as to the
sight; nor to these bodily senses alone. Memory, no less than hope, owes
its charm to 'the far away.'

"I cannot imagine myself again a child when I am in