ship Chevalier! If she had only known that she never
should see him again, poor fellow!

But, as usual, her thoughts changed their current a little at the end
of her reverie. Perhaps, after all, loneliness was not so hard to bear
as other sorrows. She had had a pleasant life, God had been very good
to her, and had spared her many trials, and granted her many
blessings. She would try and serve him better. "I am an old woman
now," she said to herself. "Things are better as they are; God knows
best, and I never should have liked to be interfered with."

Then she shut out the moonlight, and lighted her candles again, with
an almost guilty feeling. "What should I say if Nelly sat up till
nearly midnight looking out at the moon?" thought she. "It is very
silly; but it is such a beautiful night. I should like to have her see
the moon shining through the tops of the trees." But Nelly was
sleeping the sleep of the just and sensible in her own room.

Next morning at breakfast Nelly was a little conscious of there having
been uncommon confidences the night before; but Miss Dane was her
usual calm and somewhat formal self, and proposed their making a few
calls after dinner, if the weather were not too hot. Nelly at once
wondered what she had better wear. There was a certain black grenadine
which Miss Horatia had noticed with approval, and she remembered that
the lower ruffle needed hemming, and made up her mind that she would
devote most of the time before dinner to that and to some other
repairs. So, after breakfast was over, she brought the dress
downstairs, with her work-box, and settled herself in the dining-room.
Miss Dane usually sat there in the morning, it was a pleasant room,
and she could keep an unsuspected watch over the kitchen and Melissa,
who did not need watching in the least. I dare say it was for the sake
of being within the sound of a voice.

Miss Dane marched in and out that morning; she went upstairs, and came
down again, and she was busy for a while in the parlor. Nelly was
sewing steadily by a window, where one of the blinds was a little way
open, and tethered in its place by a string. She hummed a tune to
herself over and over:--

"What will you do, love, when I am going,
With white sails flowing, the seas beyond?"

And old Melissa, going to and fro at her work in the kitchen, grumbled
out bits of an ancient psalm-tune at intervals. There seemed to be
some connection between these fragments in