felt as we
walked home together--home--yes; that old farm-house must be my home as
well as hers henceforward; for any habitation which she loved must be a
kind of home for me. Sober reflection tells me how reckless and
imprudent my whole conduct has been in this business; but when did ever
love and prudence go hand-in-hand? We were children, Charlotte and I,
on that blessed afternoon; and we told each other our love as children
might have told it, without thought of the future. We have both grown
wiser since that time, and are quite agreed as to our imprudence and
foolishness; but, though we endeavour to contemplate the future in the
most serious manner, we are too happy in the present to be able to
analyse the difficulties and dangers that lie in our pathway.

Surely there must be a providence for imprudent lovers.

The November dews fell thick, and the November air was chill, as we
walked back to the homestead. I was sorry that there should be that
creeping dampness in the atmosphere that night. It seemed out of
harmony with the new warmth in my heart. I pressed my darling's little
hand closer to my breast, and had no more consciousness of any
impediments to my future bliss than of the ground on which I
walked--and that seemed air.

We found our chairs waiting for us at aunt Dorothy's tea-table; and I
enjoyed that aldermanic banquet, a Yorkshire tea, under circumstances
that elevated it to an Olympian repast.

I thought of the Comic Latin Grammar:

"Musa, musae, the gods were at tea;
Musae musam, eating raspberry jam."

I was Jove, and my love was Juno. I looked at her athwart the misty
clouds that issued from the hissing urn, and saw her beautified by a
heightened bloom, and with a sweet, shy conscious look in her eyes
which made her indeed divine.

After tea we played whist; and I am bound to confess that my divinity
played execrably, persistently disdaining to return her partner's lead,
and putting mean little trumps upon her adversary's tricks, with a
fatuous economy of resources which is always ruin.

I stayed till ten o'clock, reckless of the unknown country which
separated me from the Magpie, and then walked home alone, under the
faint starlight, though my friendly host would fain have lent me a
dog-cart. The good people here lend one another dog-carts as freely as
a cockney offers his umbrella. I went back to Huxter's Cross alone, and
the long solitary walk was very pleasant to me.

Looki