tly, and you are to cheer her, and look as if you
enjoyed it, and throw her that bouquet when I tell you, and let her
think it's a fine thing she has been doing; for this is a tremendous
affair to her, poor child, of course."

"How bright and happy she is! You will laugh at me, Tom, and indeed I
don't know what has come over me, but somehow I feel quite sad, looking
at those girls, and wondering what fate and time have in store for
them."

"Sunshine and bright hours."

"The day cometh, and also the night,"--broke in the clear voice that was
reading a selection from the Scriptures.

Tom started, and Willie took from his button-hole just such a little
nosegay as that he had bought on Broadway a fortnight before,--a
geranium leaf, a bit of mignonette, and a delicate tea-rosebud, and,
seeing it was drooping, laid it carefully upon the programme on his
knee. "I don't want that to fade," he thought as he put it down, while
he looked across the platform at the same face which he had so eagerly
pursued through a labyrinth of carriages, stages, and people, and lost
at last.

"There! Clara is talking to your beauty. I wonder if she is to sing, or
do anything. If she does, it will be something dainty and fine, I'll
wager. Helloa! there's Clara up,--now for it."

Clara's bright little voice suited her bright little face,--like her
brother's, only a great deal prettier,--and the young men enjoyed both,
aside from brotherly and cousinly feeling, cheered her "to the echo" as
Willie said, threw their bouquets,--great, gorgeous things they had
brought from the city to please her,--and wished there was more of it
all when it was through.

"What next?" said Willie.

"Heaven preserve us! your favorite subject. Who would expect to tumble
on such a theme here?--'Slavery; by Francesca Ercildoune.' Odd
name,--and, by Jove! it's the beauty herself."

They both leaned forward eagerly as she came from her seat; slender,
shapely, every fibre fine and exquisite, no coarse graining from the
dainty head to the dainty foot; the face, clear olive, delicate and
beautiful,--

"The mouth with steady sweetness set,
And eyes conveying unaware
The distant hint of some regret
That harbored there,"--

eyes deep, tender, and pathetic.

"What's this?" said Tom. "Queer. It gives me a heartache to look at
her."

"A woman for whom to fight the world, or lose the world, and be
compensated a million-fold if you died at her feet," thoug