er--in dreams.

Sometimes she came to me with the green flag in her hand, and repeated
her farewell words--"Don't forget Mary!" Sometimes she led me to our
well-remembered corner in the cottage parlor, and opened the paper on
which her grandmother had written our prayers for us. We prayed together
again, and sung hymns together again, as if the old times had come back.
Once she appeared to me, with tears in her eyes, and said, "We must
wait, dear: our time has not come yet." Twice I saw her looking at me,
like one disturbed by anxious thoughts; and twice I heard her say, "Live
patiently, live innocently, George, for my sake."

We settled in London, where my education was undertaken by a private
tutor. Before we had been long in our new abode, an unexpected change
in our prospects took place. To my mother's astonishment she received an
offer of marriage (addressed to her in a letter) from Mr. Germaine.

"I entreat you not to be startled by my proposal!" (the old gentleman
wrote). "You can hardly have forgotten that I was once fond of you,
in the days when we were both young and both poor. No return to the
feelings associated with that time is possible now. At my age, all I ask
of you is to be the companion of the closing years of my life, and to
give me something of a father's interest in promoting the future welfare
of your son. Consider this, my dear, and tell me whether you will take
the empty chair at an old man's lonely fireside."

My mother (looking almost as confused, poor soul! as if she had become
a young girl again) left the whole responsibility of decision on the
shoulders of her son! I was not long in making up my mind. If she said
Yes, she would accept the hand of a man of worth and honor, who had
been throughout his whole life devoted to her; and she would recover
the comfort, the luxury, the social prosperity and position of which my
father's reckless course of life had deprived her. Add to this, that
I liked Mr. Germaine, and that Mr. Germaine liked me. Under these
circumstances, why should my mother say No? She could produce no
satisfactory answer to that question when I put it. As the necessary
consequence, she became, in due course of time, Mrs. Germaine.

I have only to add that, to the end of her life, my good mother
congratulated herself (in this case at least) on having taken her son's
advice.

The years went on, and still Mary and I were parted, except in my
dreams. The years went on, until