Thus in my little corner of the world we have all been at the same business of love, and I wonder whether the corner be not the world itself:  Mrs. Cobb and the general, Georgiana and I the sewing-girl and the carpenter; for I had forgotten to note how quickly these two have found out that they want each other.  My arbor is at his service, if he wishes it; and Jack shall keep silent about the mastodon.

It is true that from this sentimental enumeration I have omitted the name of Mrs. Walters; but there is a secret here which not even Georgiana herself will ever get from me.  Mrs. Walters came to this town twenty years ago from the region of Bowling Green.  Some years afterwards I made a trip into that part of the State to hear the mocking-bird—­for it fills those more southern groves, but never visits ours; and while there I stepped by accident on this discovery:  There never was any Mr. Walters.  It is her maiden name.  But as I see the freedom of her life and reflect upon the things that a widow can do and an old maid cannot—­with her own sex and with mine—­I commend her wisdom and leave her at peace.  Indeed I have gone so far, when she has asked for my sympathy, as to lament with her Mr. Walters’s death.  After all, what great difference is there between her weeping for him because he is no more, and her weeping for him because he never was?  After which she freshens herself up with another handkerchief, a little Florida water, and a touch of May roses from the apothecary’s.

And I have omitted the name of Sylvia; but then Sylvia’s name, like that of Lot’s wife, can never be used as one of a class, and she herself must always be spoken of alone.  However, if Sylvia had been Lot’s wife she would not have turned to a pillar of salt, she would most probably have become a geyser.

I don’t know why, but she went on a visit to Henderson after that evening in the arbor.  I suspect the governing power of Georgiana’s wisdom to have been put forth here, for within a few days I received from Sylvia a letter which she asked me not to show to Georgiana, and in which she invited me to correspond with her secretly.  The letter was of a singularly adhesive quality as to the emotions.  Throughout she referred to herself as “the exile,” although it was plain that she wrote in the highest spirits; and in concluding she openly charged Georgiana with having given her a black eye—­a most unspeakable phrase, surely picked up in the school-room.  As a return for the black eye, Sylvia said that she had composed a poem to herself, a copy of which she enclosed.

I quote Sylvia’s commemorative verses upon her wrongs and her banishment.  They show features of metrical excess, and can scarcely claim to reflect the polish of her calmer art; but they are of value to me as proving that whatever the rebuke Georgiana may have given, it had rebounded from that elastic spirit.

  LINES TO MYSELF