?

"Yes, of course-not as you do, though. Flowers are girls' things; I'm not a girl.” "Well, but began Caroline, meditatively. However, her objection remained unuttered.

Pres

"Who said I was angry "You are cross, sullen. I don't like you when you look as you do now. You may go out by yourself, if you choose it." Her candor, her fearlessness, had something attractive in it to him, it would seem; Vaughan commenced whistling shrilly, for even while she spoke the look to which and walked on at an increased pace. she objected disappeared from his face. A ently Caroline resumed her song. Her smile wavered across his features, the cold-careless trill sounded pleasantly and joyness of his glance melted into something ously on the quiet. more familiar, and very pleasant. "O, come along; do come, we'll have a famous afternoon. reach you your hat."

Caroline;
Here, I'll

He reached it, put it on for her, and awkwardly tried to tie the strings, laughing down at her fresh, spirited face, now all glowing with glee.

“Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,’ sang she, while Vaughan tried under his breath to imitate the pretty French accents which flowed so easily over her red lips.

"Caroline," he interrupted at length, "how is it you never talk French now? I suppose yon can speak it just as well as English, can't you? When you first came They went out. It was early spring, and to Redwood, you talked English with an the sun was shining. The air seemed ting-accent, like a French childling with new and exquisite life. Caroline's "Did I?" said she, with a sudden sadstep quickened to a run that was almost a ness. The sunshine went out of her face; dance; her upturned face looked as though the ready tears gathered in the large, steady it actually gathered in some of the sunshine. Presently her clear voice broke forth in a fragment of some French chanson-one of the few indications which yet remained of the child's early foreign experiences.

"Never mind that 'Ange de la prairie," " cried Vaughan, impatiently; "if you must sing, sing' Malbrook,' or 'Le cordon bleu' -something like tunes they are."

Caroline obeyed her companion whistling an accompaniment with great clearness and precision. In the very middle of a bar, however, the little girl stopped, and darted half-way up the steep bank beside which they were going.

"What in the world is the matter?" "Primroses-just look!"

Two roots, side by side, nestling in a sort of cleft, as primroses best love to grow, with brave green leaves sheltering several timid little buds, that yet contrived to have a peep at the strange world they had crept into.

"Well, are you going to pick them? Can't you reach? Come down, and I'll get them for you."

"No; I don't want to gather them only to look. Are n't they pretty, Vaughan?"

"O all very well-yes, pretty, if you like."

"Don't you like them yourself?

eyes. "I don't like," she faltered; "it hurts me a little-talking French — because- -mamma-before mamma died—”

And there her voice fell, and a very courageous effort was made to keep back more tears.

"Because you'll forget it, and it is always useful; and besides, we might have talked together, and it would have got me on famously."

"O, Vaughan! would it really?

"Of course it would. Nothing would make it so easy as talking to you. We'd have regular lessons- but never mind."

"We will have lessons, if it will help you if it will do you any good. I shall be so glad, so pleased; it will be so nice."

"Really, do you mean it?"

"Indeed I do. We will begin to-morrow; we will begin now."

However, she found that her pupil-elect for her head, declaring he should be warm was not sufficiently advanced to converse in enough with rowing. How did she feel? that language; it would be necessary to Was she comfortable? Was she sure she commence at an earlier stage. Meanwhile, liked lying there? here was the boat to unfasten, the oars to get out.

"Sit there, Carry-in the middle. - not like that!-look-80.

Caroline smiled assent, and smiled again cheerfully up at his serious and even anxious Take face. She, thought to herself how kind he this oar Now was to be sorry; and she rather liked feelwait. Remember what I told you before-ing weak and dizzy for a little while, to be you must try to 'feather' to-day. Off we so cared for, and to be looked at as he was go!" looking at her now. Illness was too strange to her to be formidable, in those days; and the transient exhaustion was, after all, more singular than painful to the strong, healthful girl. She lay quiet in the bottom of the boat, her straw hat slung over her arm, her head resting on Vaughan's coat, her eyes alternately watching the soft clouds floating over the limpid sky, and seeking the face and answering the looks of her companion. So he rowed gently along the lake for some time in silence.

He pushed off, taking one oar, while Caroline had the other. She was a quick little thing, and rapidly improved under the slight tuition he afforded her every now and then. Only, her strength being of course inferior to his, the exertion of all her power could not prevent the boat from progressing in a very one-sided fashion.

"This is very stupid," he observed, at last; "it will never do to go on in this way. Can't you pull out any better?"

"Indeed, no!" as she paused, panting and heated, and her hands feeling very sore. "Don't you think, Vaughan, if you did n't pull so hard, we should keep more even, perhaps?"

"O, how pleasant this is!" she said at last; "how softly we go along! and how sunshiny everything looks! ”

"Are you better, then? Yes; I see a little color coming back. I declare, Carry, you quite frightened me - you went so white all at once." "Did I? I felt sick; that was it, I sup

pose.'

"Yes; no doubt that was it."

But

"But, as it is, I'm not putting out my strength, and then, you see, it's no exercise for me at all. What I want is to practise. Our fellows are going to have a match next term, and I'm stroke oar. Go on again, Carry; see what you can do." He rowed on with somewhat more vigor. She tried with all the strength of her Another pause in the conversation. arms, and the far greater strength of her will, to do what he desired; for a little while they got on pretty well, but finally the physical power failed, the oar dropped with great splashes into the water, and the boat began spinning round again.

"I can't do it," she piteously exclaimed, looking round at Vaughan. "I'd rather sit by the rudder and see you row, for a little while."

"O, I dare say," he began, laughing; but even while he laughed, her face grew so pale, her head began to droop so strangely, that he was rather alarmed. 66 'Here, Carry, dear, give me the oar. Look here; you shall lie at the bottom of the boat quite comfortable."

this time Vaughan filled it up by whistling. Caroline began to feel a little ashamed of her lazy position; she moved restlessly.

"You had better lie still, I think, till we land," observed Vaughan, in a grave, advising tone. "You might begin to feel sick again, you know." "But your coat-don't you want your coat?"

So she tried to attain this ultimate perfection, and neither moved nor spoke till they were at the landing place.. Vaughan jumped out, drew in the boat, fastened it, and then assisted her to disembark.

In a minute or two she looked up, gave a She required very little assistance; she sobbing sort of sigh, and submitted with felt quite herself again, and assured him so. docile readiness to all his arrangements. They walked homeward, through the lane, He pulled off his coat to make a pillow with beech-trees on each side, just budding

ern wall of the house-rich, burning, passionate, red buds, like drops of sunfire.

Caroline, as a girl of sixteen, was equally picturesque and poetical to behold. There was a wild, half Indian grace in her lithe, elastic movements; a flush of color in the deep-toned gold of her hair, and the warm roses that forever glowed on her cheek. Her features were fine rather than pretty, with a certain strength in their outline which is not always so pleasant in a woman's face as it promised to be in hers. But when the spirit within her chose it, those gray eyes could soften into tenderness, that firmly-cut mouth could relax into a sweetness perfectly womanly, and entirely bewitching. Even now, in her early girlhood, these changes of expression were often perceptible; but as yet she was thoroughly girlish, with all a girl's eager susceptibility to impressions — quick, fast succeeding feelings, and unanalyzed sensations. In such a nature, reverie takes the place of thought, and, indeed, Caroline, while very prone to dream, to imagine, and to lose herself in the maze of her own wild fancies,

REDWOOD looked especially pleasant on summer afternoons. Mr. Hesketh, seated in his chair under the great cedar-tree on the south lawn, thought so, at least. There was the quaint, red-brick mansion straight before his eyes, the terrace walk, and the long modern sash windows of the breakfast-room, opening on to it. At the side, a broad, level lawn again, with flower-beds here and there, and a sun-dial in the midst. Shrubberies, at all times rich and sedate with evergreens, luscious and brilliant in their seasons with lilac, syringa, and sweet-briar, rhododendron and red English roses. Beyond them were meadows sloping gently downward to the thin streamlet that flowed through the park till it reached the large piece of water they ambitiously called the lake. Dark, mysterious woods belted in the prospect. "So far shalt thou see, and no farther," they seemed to say; and Caroline liked to imagine to herself a wonderful new world lying beyond that black shadow. She had been through it often enough; but when her eyes no longer looked on the actual beyond, she chose to disbelieve it, and went back to her own crea-was too little used to reflect. Moreover, she tions. That abrupt hill, especially, crowned with a pine wood, looked like the very edge of the world, and the girl's eyes turned wistfully towards it many times in a day, with that constant longing for something in the future some unattained newness, which is one of youth's irritating pleasures, sweet pains, which you will. She had lived at Redwood all these years, and had never yet ascended Crooksforth Hill. So she was saying to Mr. Hesketh on this very afternoon, as she stood near him, leaning against the "But, my dear," observes Mr. Hesketh, slender stem of a young silver birch, and responsive to the remark she had made to twisting in her fingers a spray of roses gath- him: "you could go any day, you know. ered from the tree that overspread the south-Stokes would drive you to the foot of the hill,

was seldom retrospective in her own mind. She talked of the past quite as frequently as she thought about it. As for the future, it is the special inheritance of youth, and Caroline had taken possession long ago, and held it triumphantly, after the manner of an autocrat.

As she stands now, twisting the rose-spray between her long, thin fingers, you may be very sure she is far enough away from Crooksforth Hill, the name which has just left her lips.

and you might walk up to the top, or you could ride on your pony."

"Yes, I might," said Caroline, and went back to her empire straightway.

"There is a beautiful view from the top," went on the old man. "On clear days you can see the sea quite distinctly; and the moorlands are very fine on the other side. But it is many years since I was there. Vaughan went once, but it was a misty day, and he was disappointed. When he comes home, he must take you there. That will be the best plan."

66

bright damask and delicate pale roses arrested in her fingers.

"Are you not?" he repeated, as she was yet silent.

"O, I was stopping to remember — if I could. I was trying to think — to measure how happy I am!"

"Is it truly so, my dear child?" said the "Are old man, moved beyond his wont. you satisfied? do you wish for nothing?"

"Yes - yes! Indeed, I wish for many things," she began, quickly, but added with more deliberation, "I don't think I could be happy with nothing to wish for. It is so

Ah, he will be here in a week now!" cried the girl, rising to the surface of things, pleasant, wishing, and hoping, and expectwith a deep-drawn breath of much pleasure ing and satisfaction.

"If you are never disappointed, never After all, she lived thoroughly and keenly thwarted," Mr. Herketh put in, half sadly, in the outside world at most times. She half cynically, but in all tenderness to his was a sentient being in the fullest degree: companion. "I suppose that is essential to her perceptions were exquisitely acute; she the pleasure; is it not, my little Lina?" responded like a finely-strung harp to every air that passed by, even from the faintest to the loudest blast that shook the roof-tree.

"I am not sure. Ah, you are laughing, but it is true. If one did not half fear disappointment, expectation would not be so keen, so earnest, and would not fill up one's life so much - don't you see? It is very miserable to be disappointed, of course," she allowed, gravely, "but I dare say it is right, and does people good."

The bright colors of some flowers in the shrubbery border caught her eye. She danced across the lawn to gather them, singing in her clear but somewhat peculiar voice a fragment of some remembered French song. She looked very well in her white dress (Mr. "You think so, do you?" muttered the Hesketh especially liked her to wear white), old gentleman, drily. But a glance at her with her wide-brimmed straw-hat hanging bright, fair face dispelled the momentary on her arm, where she more frequently wore | shadow that had fallen on his own, and he it than on her head, and a blue scarf floating only smiled and stroked the rich braids of her about her neck. She danced about with hair, while she again gave her attention to a joyousness that was quite infectious. It her flowers. was pleasant to watch the elastic spring of the slender feet from the ground, the unconcious grace of the whole figure, the careless but harmonious turn of the head, with its red-gold crown of waved hair.

"She will be beautiful, almost as beautiful as her mother," Mr. Hesketh thought to himself, as he looked at her.

Presently she came, with a more sedate step and bearing, and seated herself on the grass at his feet, with her flowers in her lap. He laid his hand fondly on her head, and she turned round with a quick caressing gesture especially her own, and kissed the shrivelled, kind hand.

་

"Do you like ' expecting' people, as well as events?" was his next question, cautiously compiled, but put with an air of entire carelessness.

"Ah- yes. I like expecting Vaughan," she replied, promptly. "It makes the weeks before quite rosy, and the two or three days before the day, O, so bright!"

"Indeed. But you and Vaughan agree marvellously well. You suit one another." "Yes; that is just it," Caroline said, complacently. "O, is n't that rose exquisite?" in a sudden little enthusiastic parenthesis. "Yes, I do like Vaughan -I like him. I like his face, and his way of walking and moving, and his behavior to people, and his talking, and his fun, and his cleverness, and everything about him. I think he the is just what a man ought to be; don't you?"

"You are quite happy here, Caroline, are you not?" he said, after a little while.

She was busy arranging her flowers, but she lifted her head and paused, with

"He is a fine lad; and when once he is said Mr. Hesketh, after a pause of considera well settled into manhood, I make no tion. "What do you say, Caroline, to the doubt of his being everything one can wish." idea of a ball on your birth-day?" "Isn't he now, then?"

"But Vaughan," she persisted "Vaughan is better and not worse than most young he may lock himself in his room while the men, is n't he? What has he done wrong? event takes place; for we 'll have a ball, Has he displeased you?" Caroline. You shall write the invitations tomorrow.'