fun as the boys have there!  Sent a whole car-load of gates down to Springfield one night!  I’d like to have seen the Easthamptonites when they found their gates gone, and the Springfielders when they opened that car.  Holloa, mother!  Isn’t it jolly here?  And don’t you smell the mince pies?  I am going to eat two pieces!” And the wild boy waltzed into the library in time to see his mother drop languidly into an arm-chair, with the air of one who had endured all it was possible to endure, and who considered herself a martyr.

“Pray be quiet, and come and unfasten my cloak.  You forget that your Aunt Lucy is no longer young, to be whirled round like a top.”

“Young or not, she is as pretty as a girl, any day,” Grey replied, releasing his aunt and hastening to his mother.

Knowing her sister’s dislike to the country, Miss Grey had spared no pains to make the house as attractive as possible.  There was no furnace, but there were fires in every grate, and in the wide fire-place in the large dining-room, where the bay-window looked out upon the hills and the pretty little pond.  Lucy’s greenhouse had been stripped of its flowers, which, in bouquets, and baskets, and bowls, were seen everywhere, while pots of azaleas, and camellias, and rare lilies stood in every nook and corner, filling the rooms with a perfume like early June, when the air is full of sweetness.

But Mrs. Geraldine found the atmosphere stifling, and asked that a window might be opened, and that Grey would find her smelling-salts directly, as her head was beginning to ache.

Grey knew it always ached when she was in a crank, as he called her moods, and he brought her salts, and undid her cloak and bonnet, and kissed her once or twice, while his father, who was hot because she was hot, said it was like an August day all over the house, and opened a window, but shut it almost immediately, for a cloud of snow came drifting in, and Mrs. Geraldine knew she should get neuralgia in such a frightful draught.

“Come to your room and lie down.  You will feel better when you are rested,” Lucy said, with a troubled look on her sweet face, as she led the way to the large, cheerful chamber which her sister always occupied when at Grey’s Park.

“What time do you dine?” Geraldine asked, as she caught the savory smell of something cooking in the kitchen.

“I have fixed the dinner hour at half-past two,” Lucy replied, and Geraldine rejoined: 

“Half-past two!  What a heathenish hour! and I do so detest early dinners.”

“Yes, I know,” Lucy answered, in an apologetic tone, “but Hannah cannot stay late, on account of her father” then, turning to her brother-in-law, who had just come in, she added:  “You know, I suppose, that your father has not been as well as usual for several weeks.  Hannah thinks he is failing very fast.”

“Yes, she wrote me to that effect,” Burton replied, “but she is easily alarmed, and so I did not attach much importance to it.  Do you think him seriously ill?”