the
tune.

Serena was a pretty girl, with smooth, silky hair, end eyes of the
colour of the nodding harebells that blossom on the edge of the woods.
She was slight and delicate. The neighbours called her sickly; and a
great doctor from Philadelphia who had spent a summer at Bytown had
put his ear to her chest, and looked grave, and said that she ought
to winter in a mild climate. That was before people had discovered the
Adirondacks as a sanitarium for consumptives.

But the inhabitants of Bytown were not in the way of paying much
attention to the theories of physicians in regard to climate. They held
that if you were rugged, it was a great advantage, almost a virtue; but
if you were sickly, you just had to make the best of it, and get along
with the weather as well as you could.

So Serena stayed at home and adapted herself very cheerfully to the
situation. She kept indoors in winter more than the other girls, and had
a quieter way about her; but you would never have called her an invalid.
There was only a clearer blue in her eyes, and a smoother lustre on
her brown hair, and a brighter spot of red on her cheek. She was
particularly fond of reading and of music. It was this that made her
so glad of the arrival of the violin. The violin's master knew it, and
turned to her as a sympathetic soul. I think he liked her eyes too,
and the soft tones of her voice. He was a sentimentalist, this little
Canadian, for all he was so merry; and love--but that comes later.

"Where'd you get your fiddle, Jack? said Serena, one night as they sat
together in the kitchen.

"Ah'll get heem in Kebeck," answered Jacques, passing his hand lightly
over the instrument, as he always did when any one spoke of it. "Vair'
nice VIOLON, hein? W'at you t'ink? Ma h'ole teacher, to de College, he
was gif' me dat VIOLON, w'en Ah was gone away to de woods."

"I want to know! Were you in the College? What'd you go off to the woods
for?"

"Ah'll get tire' fraum dat teachin'--read, read, read, h'all taim'.
Ah'll not lak' dat so moch. Rader be out-door--run aroun'--paddle de
CANOE--go wid de boys in de woods--mek' dem dance at ma MUSIQUE. A-a-ah!
Dat was fon! P'raps you t'ink dat not good, hem? You t'ink Jacques one
beeg fool, Ah suppose?"

"I dunno," said Serena, declining to commit herself, but pressing on
gently, as women do, to the point she had in view when she began the
talk. "Dunno's you're any more foolish than a man that keeps on doin'
w