“And then, of course, this sublime suitor must die, or desert me, to show how I would behave under the trial.—­Katy,” continued my aunt, after a little pause, with a smile and slight blush, “I have half a mind to tell you a little romance of my early days, when I was just your age.  It may be useful to you at this point of your life.”

“Is it possible?” cried I,—­“a romance of your early days!  Quick, let me hear!”

“I shouldn’t have called it a romance, Katy; for as a story, it is just nothing.  It has no interest except as marking the beginning of my education,—­the education, I mean, of real life.”

“But let me hear; there’s some spice of poetry in it, I know.”

“Well, then, it’s like many another story of early fancy.  In my childhood I had a playmate.  Our fathers’ houses stood but a few rods apart, and the families lived in habits of the closest intimacy.  From my earliest remembrance, the brave little boy, four years older than I, was my sworn friend and protector; and as we increased in years, an affection warm and frank as that of brother and sister grew up between us.  A love of nature and of poetry, and a certain earnestness and enthusiasm of character, which separated us both from other children, drew us closely together.  At fifteen he left us to fit for college at a distant school, and thenceforward he was at home only for brief visits, till he was graduated with distinguished honor at the age of twenty-one.  During those six years of separation our relation to each other had suffered no change.  We had corresponded with tolerable regularity, and I had felt a sister’s pride in his talents and literary honors.  When, therefore, he returned home to recruit his health, which had been seriously impaired by study and confinement, I welcomed him with great joy, and with all the frankness of former times.

“Again we read, chatted, and rambled together.  I found him unchanged in character, but improved, cultivated, to a degree which delighted, almost awed me.  When he read our favorite authors with his rich, musical voice, and descanted on their beauties with discriminating taste and fervent poetic feeling, a new light fell on the page.  Through his eyes I learned to behold in nature a richness, a grace, a harmony, a meaning, only vaguely felt before.  It was as if I had just received the key to a mysterious cipher, unlocking deep and beautiful truths in earth and sea and sky, by which they were invested with a life and splendor till now unseen.  But it was his noble sentiments, his generous human sympathies, his ardent aspirations after honorable distinction to be won by toil and self-denial, which woke my heart as by an electric touch.  My own unshaped, half-conscious aims and aspirations, stirred with life, took wing and soared with his into the pure upper air.  Ah! it was a bright, beautiful dream, Kate, the life of those few months.  I never once thought of love, nor of the possibility of separation.  All flowed