tender in the joints or creases, by
reason of having been often folded and unfolded read aloud as follows:

"The bard of Oxbow Pillage--our valued correspondent who writes over
the signature of G. H.--is, in our opinion, more remarkable for his
originality than for any other of his numerous gifts."

Clement was apparently silenced by this, and the poet a little elated
with a sense of triumph. Susan could not help sharing his feeling of
satisfaction, and without meaning it in the least, nay, without knowing
it, for she was as simple and pure as new milk, edged a little bit--the
merest infinitesimal atom--nearer to Gifted Hopkins, who was on one side
of her, while Clement walked on the other. Women love the conquering
party,--it is the way of their sex. And poets, as we have seen,
are well-nigh irresistible when they exert their dangerous power of
fascination upon the female heart. But Clement was above jealousy; and,
if he perceived anything of this movement, took no notice of it.

He saw a good deal of his pretty Susan that day. She was tender in her
expressions and manners as usual, but there was a little something
in her looks and language from time to time that Clement did not know
exactly what to make of. She colored once or twice when the young poet's
name was mentioned. She was not so full of her little plans for the
future as she had sometimes been, "everything was so uncertain," she
said. Clement asked himself whether she felt quite as sure that her
attachment would last as she once did. But there were no reproaches, not
even any explanations, which are about as bad between lovers. There
was nothing but an undefined feeling on his side that she did not cling
quite so closely to him, perhaps, as he had once thought, and that, if
he had happened to have been drowned that day when he went down with
the beautiful young woman, it was just conceivable that Susan, who
would have cried dreadfully, no doubt, would in time have listened to
consolation from some other young man,--possibly from the young poet
whose verses he had been admiring. Easy-crying widows take new husbands
soonest; there is nothing like wet weather for transplanting, as Master
Gridley used to say. Susan had a fluent natural gift for tears, as
Clement well knew, after the exercise of which she used to brighten up
like the rose which had been washed, just washed in a shower, mentioned
by Cowper.

As for the poet, he learned more of his own sentimen