rose, fifteen hundred dollars each, and our names, Delphine and Laura.  Not a bad heritage, with economy, good looks, and hearts to take life cheerily.  Still it is plain enough that a fifty-dollar note for the bride was not to be despised nor overlooked.  In fact, with the exception of Polly’s present of a brown earthen bowl and a pudding-stick, it was the first approach to a wedding-gift that I had yet received.  And this note was trouble the second.  But of that, by-and-by.

“Delphine!” said Laura, softly.

Some people’s voices excoriate you, Laura’s was soft and soothing.

“Well!”

“Don’t say any more to—­to Mr. Sampson about names.”

“Oh, dear! hateful!”

“Delphine, be thankful it’s no worse!”

“How could it be worse,—­unless it were Hog-and-Hominy?  I never knew anything so utterly ridiculous!  America!  Columbia!  Yankee-Doodle!  I’d rather it had been Abraham!”

All this I almost shouted in a passion of vexation, and Laura hastily closed the window.

“Let me loosen your braids for you, Del,” said she, quietly, taking up my hair in her gentle way, which always had a good effect on my prancing nerves; “let me bathe your forehead with this, dear;—­now, let me tell you something you will like.”

“Oh, my heart!  Laura, I wish you could! for I declare to you, that, if it wasn’t for—­if it didn’t——­Oh, dear, dear! how I do hate that name!”

“It is not so very good a name,—­that must be owned, Del.  All is, you will have to call him ‘Mr. Sampson,’ or ‘My dear,’ or ‘You’; or, stay, you might abbreviate it into Ame, Ami.  Ami and Delphine!—­it sounds like a French story for youth.  If I were you, I wouldn’t meddle with it or think any more about it.”

“Such a name! so ridiculous!” I muttered.

“You have considered it so much and so closely, Del, that it is most disproportionately prominent in your mind.  You can put out Bunker-Hill Monument with your little finger, if you hold it close enough to your eye.  Don’t you remember what Mr. Sampson said to-night about somebody whose mind had no perspective in it? that his shoe-ribbon was as prominent and important as his soul?  Don’t go and be a goosey, Del, and have no perspective, will you?” And Laura leaned over and kissed my forehead, all corrugated with my pet grief.

“Well, Laura, what can be worse?  I declare—­almost I think, Laura, I would rather he should have some great defect.”

“Moral or physical?  Gambling? one leg? one eye? lying? six fingers?  How do you mean, Del?”

“Oh, patience! no, indeed!—­six fingers!  I only meant”——­

And here, of course, I stopped.

“Which virtue could you spare in Mr. Sampson?” said Laura, coolly, fastening my hair neatly in its net, and sitting down in her rocking-chair.

When it came to that, of course there were none to be spared.  We undressed, silently,—­Laura rolling all her ribbons carefully, and I throwing mine about; Laura, consistent, conservative, allopathic, High-Church,—­I, homoeopathic, hydropathic, careless, and given to Parkerism.  It did not matter, as to harmony.  Two bracelets, but no need to be alike.  We clasped arms and hearts all the same.  By-and-by I remembered,—­