or a long time, anxious to overhear or to join in.

"Really," said Amy, looking up with a smile, "I was making a very
innocent remark."

"Perfectly innocent, I'm sure!" replied Fanny, in her sweetest manner.
It was such a different sweetness from Amy Waring's, that Hope turned
and looked very curiously at Miss Fanny.

"There are few men of forty who have not been in love," said Amy, calmly.
"That is what I was saying."

As there was only one man of forty, or near that age, in the little
group, the appeal was evidently to him. Lawrence Newt looked at the
three girls, with the swimming light in his eyes, half crushing them and
smiling, so that every one of them felt, each in her own way, that they
were as completely blinded by that smile as by a glare of sunlight--which
also, like that smile, is warm, and not treacherous.

They could not see beyond the words, nor hope to.

"Miss Amy is right, as usual," said he.

"Why, Uncle Lawrence, tell us all about it!" said Fanny, with a hard,
black smile in her eyes.

Uncle Lawrence was not in the slightest degree abashed.

"Fanny," said he, "I will speak to you in a parable. Remember, to _you_.
There was a farmer whose neighbor built a curious tower upon his land.
It was upon a hill, in a grove. The structure rose slowly, but public
curiosity rose with fearful rapidity. The gossips gossiped about it in
the public houses. Rumors of it stole up to the city, and down came
reporters and special correspondents to describe it with an unctuous
eloquence and picturesque splendor of style known only to them. The
builder held his tongue, dear Fanny. The workmen speculated upon the
subject, but their speculations were no more valuable than those of
other people. They received private bribes to tell; and all the great
newspapers announced that, at an enormous expense, they had secured the
exclusive intelligence, and the exclusive intelligence was always wrong.
The country was in commotion, dear Fanny, about a simple tower that
a man was building upon his land. But the wonder of wonders, and the
exasperation of exasperations, was, that the farmer whose estate adjoined
never so much as spoke of the tower--was never known to have asked about
it--and, indeed, it was not clear that he knew of the building of any
tower within a hundred miles of him. Of course, my dearest Fanny, a
self-respecting Public Sentiment could not stand that. It was insulting
to the public, which manifested so prof