wise with poverty and sorrer, you've lighted up
with your purty golden head!" And then he tells her, by way of
illustrating the depth and sincerity of his early attachment, that it
once happened to him to have an orange given him at Christmas time; and
that, although he had never tasted an orange in all his born days,
except through a confectioner's window-glass, he without hesitation
tossed it over the wall into her father's yard, hoping that she, who ate
oranges every day, might possibly have his added to the rest. And he
concluded with, "Such was the nater of my feelin's for you even then."

"And the nater of your feelin's, John, was not only wergin' close upon
the feelin's of love," says the milliner, deeply touched, "but they was
love,--love of the wiolentest kind!"

And then she says that, if she can only find in the town an orange as
big as the full moon, she'll buy it, let it cost what it will, and give
it to him.

And then she says, playfully tapping his chin, "I only wish them
feelin's had hild."

"You wish them feelin's had hild!" says John, leaning his face still
lower to the touches of her pretty hands; and then in his reverence he
addressed her in the third person, saying, "How sweetly prowokin' she
is!"

Then, very earnestly, "They hev hild all these years, them feelin's hev,
and they hev been rewived this day in all their wiolence; and the
beautiful curls that used to shine down all the daffodils are just as
soft and as golden as ever!" Here he ventured to touch the ends of the
long-admired tresses; but he did not see that they were both thin and
faded, and that the parting was very, very wide. "Ay, it's the same
bright head," he went on, "that's been a-shinin' all these years so far
away that I never expected to put my rough hand on 't,--not, anyhow,
afore I'd crossed the dark ferry, and got refined into a spirit. And
now, just think! here you be, a-sailin' in my little wessel, that I'd
christened 'The Rose Rollins' for your memory's sake,--a-sailin' by my
side in all the freshness and bloom of your perfect beauty!"

The milliner laughed, well pleased with the compliment, and said that,
when one charm wanished, another took its place sometimes; so that, if
we only kept up our witality, we didn't look much the worse for all our
years. "Now you, for instance, could never have been handsomer than you
are to-day!" she concluded, pointing her theory with that kindly method
so characteristic of women.