“So, then,” said Aunt Linny, as she was sealing this letter, “you see, Katy, that your romance has come to an untimely end.”

I turned round her averted face with both my hands, and looked in her eyes till she blushed and laughed in spite of herself.

“My knowledge of symptoms is not large,” said I, “but I have a conviction that his health will now endure a northern climate.”

“Let’s talk no more of this!” said she, putting me aside with a gentle gravity, which checked my nonsense.  But as I was unable to detect in her, on this or the following day, the slightest depression of spirits, I shrewdly guessed that our anticipations of the result were not very dissimilar.

The next return post brought, not the expected letter, but our hero himself.  I was really amazed at the change in his appearance.  Erect, elastic, his face radiant with expression, he looked years younger than at his first arrival.  I caught Aunt Linny’s eloquent glance of surprise and pleasure as they met.  For a moment the bridal pair of my dream stood living before me; then vanished even more suddenly than that fancy show of the old magician.  When we again met, two or three hours after, my aunt’s serene smile and dewy eyes told me that all was right.

* * * * *

In a month the wedding took place, and the “happy pair” started off on a few weeks’ excursion.  As I was helping my aunt exchange her bridal for her travelling attire, I whispered, “What say you to my doctrine of first love, aunty?”

“That it finds its best refutation in my experience.  No, believe me, dearest Katy, the true jewel of life is a spirit that can rule itself, that can subject even the strongest, dearest impulses to reason and duty.  Without it, indeed,” she added, with a soft earnestness, “affection towards the worthiest object becomes an unworthy sentiment—­And besides, Kate,”—­here her eye gleamed with girlish mirth—­“you see, if I had made love my all, I should have missed it all.  Not even Cousin Harry’s constancy would have been proof against a withered, whining, sentimental old maid.”

“Well, you will allow that it’s a great paradox, aunty!  If you believe in my doctrine, it turns out a mere delusion; if you don’t believe in it, ’tis sure to come true.”

“Take care, then, and disbelieve in it with all your might!” said she, laughing, and kissing me, as we left her room,—­my room alone henceforth.  A shadow seemed to fill it, as she passed the threshold.

OUR BIRDS, AND THEIR WAYS.

Among our summer birds, the vast majority are but transient visitors, born and bred far to the northward, and returning thither every year.  The North, then, is their proper domicile, their legal “place of residence,” which they have never renounced, but only temporarily desert, for special reasons.  Their sojourn with us, or farther south, is merely an exile by stress of climate, like the flitting of the Southern planters from the rice-fields to the mountains in summer, or the pleasure tour or watering-place visit customary with the citizens of Boston and New York.