ave been seen
tripping lightly over the smooth sward, the green trees rustling
musically in the summer breeze, and Nature's myriad tones "concerting
harmonies" on hill and dale. And one needed but to see the smiling
lip, and those clear, laughter-loving eyes peeping from beneath just
the richest and brightest golden curls in the world, to know what a
joyous heart was beating to that fairy-light and bounding step. Wonder
none could be, that many an eye brightened as she passed, and many a
kindly wish--that was never the less trustful and sincere for that it
was couched in homely phrase--sped her on her way. Dream-dell was
reached at length--the flowering shrubs which formed the rural
gate-way parted, and Fanny threw herself on the waving grass, with a
careless grace which not all the fashionable female attitudinizers in
the world could have imitated, so full of unstudied ease and
naturalness it was--with her small cottage bonnet thrown off that
wealth of clustering curls which were lifted by the soft summer wind,
and fell shadowingly over the brightest and most beaming little face
upon which ever fond lover gazed admiringly--with eyes which seemed to
have caught their deep and dewy blue from the violets she clasped in
one small hand, and on which they were bent with a silent glance of
admiration--for Fanny was a dear lover of wild-wood flowers, as who is
not who bears a heart untouched by the sullying stains of earth? One
tiny foot had escaped from the folds of her simple muslin dress, and
lay half-buried in the green turf--a wee, wee foot it was, so small,
indeed, that it seemed just the easiest thing possible to encase it
within the lost slipper of Cinderella, if said slipper could but have
been produced; at least so said a pair of eyes, as plainly as pair of
eyes _could_ say it, which peering from behind a leafy screen, were
now upon it fixed in most eager intensity, and now wandered to the
face of the fair owner thereof, who was still bent over the flowers in
the small hand, as if seeking some hidden spell in their many-colored
leaves.

That pair of eyes were the appurtenances belonging to a face that
might have proved no uninteresting study to the physiognomist, albeit
it would have puzzled one not a little, methinks, to have formed a
satisfactory conclusion therefrom, so full of contradictions did it
seem. A mass of waving hair fell around a brow high and
well-developed, though somewhat darkly tinged by the warmth