ited on a tea-tray, one by one, various members of
a tea-set, which had evidently been plucked from a tea-plant in China,
since the forms and figures were all suggested by the flowery kingdom.
The lids of the vessels were shaped like tea-leaves; and miniature China
men and women picked their way about among the letters of the Chinese
alphabet, as if they were playing at word-puzzles. Nicholas admired the
service to its owner's content, establishing thus a new bond of sympathy
between them; and both were soon seated near the table, sipping the tea
with demure little spoons, that approached the meagreness of Chinese
chop-sticks, and decorating white bread with brown marmalade.

"Now," said the host, "since you share my salt, I ought to be introduced
to you, an office which I will perform without ceremony. My name is Paul
Le Clear," which Nicholas and we had already guessed correctly.

"And mine," said Nicholas, "is Nicholas,--Nicholas Judge."

"Very well, Mr. Judge; now let us have the story," said Paul, extending
himself in an easy attitude; "and begin at the beginning."

"The story begins with my birth," said Nicholas, with a reckless
ingenuousness which was a large part of his host's entertainment.

But it is unnecessary to recount in detail what Paul heard, beginning at
that epoch, twenty-two years back. Enough to say in brief what Nicholas
elaborated: that his mother had died at his birth, in a country home at
the foot of a mountain; that in that home he had lived, with his father
for almost solitary friend and teacher, until, his father dying, he had
come to the city to live; that he had but just reached the place, and
had made it his first object to find his mother's only sister, with
whom, indeed, his father had kept up no acquaintance, and for finding
whom he had but a slight clue, even if she were then living. Nicholas
brought his narrative in regular order down to the point where Paul had
so unexpectedly accosted him, stopping there, since subsequent facts
were fully known to both.

"And now," he concluded, warming with his subject, "I am in search of my
aunt. What sort of woman she will prove to be I cannot tell; but if
there is any virtue in sisterly blood, surely my Aunt Eunice cannot be
without some of that noble nature which belonged to my mother, as I have
heard her described, and as her miniature bids me believe in. How many
times of late, in my solitariness, have I pictured to myself this one
kinsw