conclusion of the poem, had not Lottie sprung up, with
her imploring face suffused by her discovery, for the first time, of
the identity of her secret lover and the escape of his sonnet from her
pocket. It was too late! There he stood before her unmistakably proved,
and herself unmistakably proving in what estimation she held his verses
and bouquets.

"Oh Billy, dear Billy! If you do love me, don't do so!" So exclaiming,
she held out her hand, and Billy put the MS. into it with all the
dignity of a wounded spirit.

"Mr. Lovegrove," said Miss Pilgrim, "I don't know what to say."

"I feel very much that way myself," said Daniel.

"_I_ don't," said Billy, now in command of his voice. "I'll tell
you what it is: perhaps Daniel didn't know how much I wanted you,
Lottie--and perhaps he wants you 'most as bad as I do. But whatever way
it is, I want you to choose between us, fair and square, and no dodging.
Come now! You can take just whichever one of us you please, and the
other won't lay up any grudge, though I know if that's me, or like me,
he'll feel awful. You can have till to-morrow morning to make up your
mind between me and Daniel, and if he won't say anything about it to pa
and ma till then, I won't. Good-by, _dear_ Lottie!"

He drew her face down to his, kissed her almost affectionately and then
marched out of the door, feeling, as he afterward told me, as if he
had blackened his boots all for nothing. Ah me! my dear Billy, how many
times we do that in this world! Of what followed when Daniel and Miss
Pilgrim were left alone, I have never had full details.

But I do know that the young lady obeyed Billy and made her choice. Six
months after that both my nephews stood up in Mrs. Rumbullion's parlor
to take their several shares in a ceremony in which Miss Pilgrim was
the central figure when it began, and Mrs. Daniel Lovegrove when it
concluded. Time and elasticity of boyhood had so closed the sharp but
evanescent wound in Billy's heart that he could stand the trial of being
groomsman where he had wanted to be groom--more especially since he
was supported through the emergency by a little sister of Lottie's who
promised to be wondrously like her by the time Billy could stand up in
the more enviable capacity. Neither Daniel nor Lottie would listen to
any objection to such a groomsman on the score of his extreme youth,
for, as they said, Billy had been quite as instrumental in bringing them
together as any agent, save