time I was strong both in body and mind to hear it. Four years ago I had been utterly run down and all but helpless.
Then she rushed in one day to bid me good-bye before she went to London with her father, who was going there to see his precious effects on their way to his new residence.
"We shall be six weeks or more in London. Oh, Miss Cowan, I wish you were going with us! How delightful it would be! and papa's new house is to be all furnished and ready for us when we come back. You'll come there, will you? You'll come there when we come hack? Papa told me to ask you."
"Certainly I'll come," I said.
"And I'll write to you all about London, and you'll write to me, and we'll meet at papa's as soon as we return. How good you were to me four years ago! and what a foolish little being I was!—not that I am much else yet." And away she went.
In six weeks they were home, and Madge and Jo came to escort me for the week's visit I had promised. I thought I would do all I could do in the way of helping Madge with advice in that time, and as her father was so soon to lose her, he ought to have her to himself as much as possible.
Pleasant as he was at first, Mr. Bird improved on further acquaintance. Although he spent a good while every day at work among his treasures, he was nothing of a recluse or absent-minded student. His powers of observation were such that I think nothing escaped him, but you felt that he took human feeling into account, and did not watch his fellow-creatures as if they were merely specimens; and there was not a particle of venom in his nature: he was not simple, but he had all the simplicity of a good man.
I was sorry to leave—very sorry. Madge pressed me to stay, but Mr. Bird did not: he merely said he hoped I would come back soon; and I must say I went to my house, once more emptied of inhabitants, with a kind of heart-sickness. I had left a circle which seemed perfect, and I could not help a feeling of shut-outism; but the knowledge of their happiness gave me happiness—the kind of happiness one can live on in a quiet way.
I was surprised when, a few days after, Mr. Bird came in just as I was sitting down to my early dinner. I was very glad to see him, and said, "Where is Madge? Why is she not with you?"
"She did not know I was coming."
"I wish you had brought her."
"I might, but I wanted to speak to you. I have always felt that I have never thanked you enough for your kindness to her."
"I am infinitely more indebted to her than ever she has been to me. If she had not walked in that afternoon, I think I must have sunk into a state of imbecility: she saved me from that."
"Nonsense!" he said: "you don't look very like it."
"Not now, but then I did. I had been sorely bereaved; but I don't know that I could make you understand the kind of state I was in."
"I have been sorely bereaved too in my time."
"Yes," I said in a low voice—I felt that without thinking I had probed an old wound—"yes, but I was miserably weak."
"How many of us are strong?"
We were silent for a time. Margaret had taken the dinner things away, and we were standing by the fire, when he suddenly said, "Do I look very old?" I looked at him. "Grizzled and weatherbeaten, you think?"
"Well, no," I said, "not very."
"Do you think any woman would marry me?"
"Yes," I said, "I think it very possible."
"Would you marry me?" he said.
I shall say no more about it. A lovematch at forty or fifty is considered fair game to laugh at, as if love could ever be out of season. Be that as it may, Madge and Jo were not happier than we, and I say it, Let them laugh that like. The happiness of youth seems a thing of course, a birthright, and like the sleep of youth it is deep and uncon-
