“Bless me, I had almost forgotten to ask if you remember that stiff old English woman with the snuff-colored satin who came to our store some five years ago, and found so much fault with Yankee goods, as she called them?  If you have forgotten her, you surely remember the two girls in flats, one of whom seemed so much distressed at her grandmother’s remarks.  She, the distressed one, was Maggie; the other was Theo; and the old lady was Madam Conway, who, luckily for me, chances at this time to be in England, buying up goods, I presume.  Maggie says that this trip to Worcester, together with a camp-meeting held in the Hillsdale woods last year, is the extent of her travels, and one would think so to see her.  A perfect child of nature, full of fun, beautiful as a Hebe, and possessing the kindest heart in the world.  If you wish to know more of her come and see for yourself; but again I warn you, hands off; nobody is to flirt with her but myself, and it is very doubtful whether even I can do it peaceably, for that old Hagar, who, by the way, is a curious specimen, gave me to understand when I lay on the rock, with her sitting by, as a sort of ogress, that so long as she lived no city chap with strapped pants (do pray, bring me a pair, George, without straps!) and sneering mouth was going to fool with Margaret Miller.

“So you see my mouth is at fault again.  Hang it all, I can’t imagine what ails it, that everybody should think I’m making fun of them.  Even old Safford mutters about my making mouths at him when I haven’t thought of him in a month!  Present my compliments to the old gentleman and tell him one of ‘the boys’ thinks seriously of following his advice, which you know is ‘to sow our wild oats and get a wife.’  Do, pray, come, for I am only half myself without you.

“Yours in the brotherhood,

“Henry Warner.”

For a time after reading the above George Douglas sat wrapped in thought, then bursting into a laugh as he thought how much the letter was like the jovial, light-hearted fellow who wrote it, he put it aside, and leaning back in his chair mused long and silently, not of Theo, but of Maggie, half wishing he were in Warner’s place instead of being there in the dusty city.  But as this could not be, he contented himself with thinking that at some time not far distant he would visit the old stone house—­would see for himself this wonderful Maggie—­and, though he had been warned against it, would possibly win her from his friend, who, unconsciously perhaps, had often crossed his path, watching him jealously lest he should look too often and too long upon the fragile Rose, blooming so sweetly in her bird’s-nest of a home among the tall old trees of Leominster.