hat is being done for him. Besides, I had such a
strange dream,--I thought I met you, Jenny, alone, in the night, and you
had six red roses in your hand,--let me see how many have you." He had
come close to her, and he now took the roses and counted them. There
were six, sure enough. "Humph!" he said, and went on. "Six red roses, I
thought; and while I looked at them they turned white as snow; and then
it seemed to me it was a shroud you had in your hand, and not roses at
all; and you, seeing how I was frightened, said to me, 'What if it
should turn out to be my wedding-dress?' And while we talked, your
father came between us, and led you away by a great chain that he put
round your neck. But you think all this foolish, I see." And, as if he
feared the apprehension he had confessed involved some surrender of
manhood, he cast down his eyes, and awaited her reply in confusion. She
had too much tact to have noticed this at any time; but in view of the
serious circumstances in which he then stood, she could not for the life
of her have turned any feeling of his into a jest, however unwarranted
she might have felt it to be.

"My grandmother was a great believer in dreams," she said,
sympathetically; "but she always thought they went by contraries; and,
if she was right, why, yours bodes ever so much good. But come, Hobert,
let us go into the house: it's raining harder."

"How stupid of me, Jenny, not to remember that you were being drowned,
almost! You must try to excuse me: I am really hardly myself to-night."

"Excuse you, Hobert! As if you could ever do anything I should not think
was just right!" And she laughed the little musical laugh that had been
ringing in his ears so long, and skipped before him into the house.

He followed her with better heart; and, as she strained and put away the
milk, and swept the hearth, and set the house in order, he pleased
himself with fancies of a home of which she would be always the charming
mistress.

And who, that saw the sweet domestic cheer she diffused through the
house with her harmless little gossip about this and that, and the
artfully artless kindnesses to him she mingled with all, could have
blamed him? He was given to melancholy and to musing; his cheek was
sometimes pale, and his step languid; and he saw, all too often,
troublesome phantoms coming to meet him. This disposition in another
would have incited the keenest ridicule in the mind of Jenny Bowen, but
in Hobert