idered
well-feathered for me. It gave them all a sensation when they found out
from the will just how well it was feathered. And it gave me one too.
All that money would make me nervous if Mr. Carter hadn't made Dr. John
its guardian, though I sometimes feel that the responsibility of me
makes him treat me as if he were my step-grandfather-in-law. But all in
all, though stiff in its manners, Hillsboro is lovely and loving; and
couldn't inquisitiveness be called just real affection with a kind of
turn in its eye?

And there I sat in my front room, being embraced in a perfume of
everybody's lilacs and hawthorns and affectionate interest and
moonlight, with a letter in my hand from the man whose two photographs
and letters I used to keep locked up in my desk. Is it any wonder I
tingled when he told me that he had never come back because he couldn't
have me, and that now the minute he landed in England he was going to
lay his heart at my feet? I added his colonial honours to his prostrate
heart myself, and my own beat at the prospect. All the eight years faded
away, and I was again back in the old garden down at Aunt Adeline's
cottage saying good-bye, folded up in his arms. That's the way my memory
put the scene to me, but the word "folded" made me remember that blue
muslin dress again. I had promised to keep it and wear it for him when
he came back--and I couldn't forget that the blue belt was just
twenty-three inches and mine is--no, I _won't_ write it. I had got
that dress out of the old trunk not ten minutes after I had read the
letter and measured it.

No, nobody would blame me for running right across the garden to Dr.
John with such a real trouble as that! All of a sudden I hugged the
letter and the little book and laughed until the tears ran down my
cheeks.

Then, before I went to bed, I went round my garden and had family
prayers with my flowers. I do that because they are all the family I've
got, and God knows that all His budding things need encouragement,
whether it is a widow or a snowball-bush. He'll give it to us!

And I'm praying again as I sit here and watch for the doctor's light to
go out. I hate to go to sleep and leave it burning, for he sits up so
late and he is so gaunt and thin and tired-looking most times. That's
what the last prayer is about, almost always--sleep for him and no night
call!

Leaf II.

A Love-Letter, Loaded.

The very worst page in this red book is the fifth. It say