it touched and silent. Hetty goes up and kisses
her father.

"You tell us of others, General Harry," she says, passing a handkerchief
across her eyes, "of Marion and Sumpter, of Greene and Wayne, and Rawdon
and Cornwallis, too, but you never mention Colonel Warrington!"

"My dear, he will tell you his story in private!" whispers my wife,
clinging to her sister, "and you can write it for him."

But it was not to be. My Lady Theo, and her husband too, I own, catching
the infection from her, never would let Harry rest, until we had coaxed,
wheedled, and ordered him to ask Hetty in marriage. He obeyed, and it
was she who now declined. "She had always," she said, "the truest regard
for him from the dear old times when they had met as almost children
together. But she would never leave her father. When it pleased God to
take him, she hoped she would be too old to think of bearing any other
name but her own. Harry should have her love always as the best of
brothers; and as George and Theo have such a nurseryful of children,"
adds Hester, "we must show our love to them, by saving for the young
ones." She sent him her answer in writing, leaving home on a visit to
friends at a distance, as though she would have him to understand that
her decision was final. As such Hal received it. He did not break his
heart. Cupid's arrows, ladies, don't bite very deep into the tough skins
of gentlemen of our age; though, to be sure, at the time of which I
write, my brother was still a young man, being little more than fifty.
Aunt Het is now a staid little lady with a voice of which years have
touched the sweet chords, and a head which Time has powdered over with
silver. There are days when she looks surprisingly young and blooming.
Ah me, my dear, it seems but a little while since the hair was golden
brown, and the cheeks as fresh as roses! And then came the bitter blast
of love unrequited which withered them; and that long loneliness of
heart which, they say, follows. Why should Theo and I have been so
happy, and thou so lonely? Why should my meal be garnished with love,
and spread with plenty, while yon solitary outcast shivers at my gate? I
bow my head humbly before the Dispenser of pain and poverty, wealth and
health; I feel sometimes as if, for the prizes which have fallen to the
lot of me unworthy, I did not dare to be grateful. But I hear the voices
of my children in their garden, or look up at their mother from my book,
or perhaps my