seen the
little beauty face to face. I have a presentiment, Jack, that this Daw
is a rara avis! Keep up your spirits, my boy, until I write you another
letter--and send me along word how's your leg.

V.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

August 13, 1872.

The party, my dear Jack, was as dreary as possible. A lieutenant of the
navy, the rector of the Episcopal Church at Stillwater, and a society
swell from Nahant. The lieutenant looked as if he had swallowed a couple
of his buttons, and found the bullion rather indigestible; the rector
was a pensive youth, of the daffydowndilly sort; and the swell from
Nahant was a very weak tidal wave indeed. The women were much better, as
they always are; the two Miss Kingsburys of Philadelphia, staying at the
Seashell House, two bright and engaging girls. But Marjorie Daw!

The company broke up soon after tea, and I remained to smoke a cigar
with the colonel on the piazza. It was like seeing a picture, to see
Miss Marjorie hovering around the old soldier, and doing a hundred
gracious little things for him. She brought the cigars and lighted the
tapers with her own delicate fingers, in the most enchanting fashion. As
we sat there, she came and went in the summer twilight, and seemed, with
her white dress and pale gold hair, like some lovely phantom that had
sprung into existence out of the smoke-wreaths. If she had melted into
air, like the statue of Galatea in the play, I should have been more
sorry than surprised.

It was easy to perceive that the old colonel worshipped her and she
him. I think the relation between an elderly father and a daughter just
blooming into womanhood the most beautiful possible. There is in it a
subtile sentiment that cannot exist in the case of mother and daughter,
or that of son and mother. But this is getting into deep water.

I sat with the Daws until half past ten, and saw the moon rise on the
sea. The ocean, that had stretched motionless and black against the
horizon, was changed by magic into a broken field of glittering ice,
interspersed with marvellous silvery fjords. In the far distance the
Isle of Shoals loomed up like a group of huge bergs drifting down on us.
The Polar Regions in a June thaw! It was exceedingly fine. What did we
talk about? We talked about the weather--and you! The weather has been
disagreeable for several days past--and so have you. I glided from one
topic to the other very naturally. I told my friends of your ac