He bewilders you, too, with his talk about the great bridges of London,—­London Bridge specially, where they sell kids for a penny; which story your new acquaintance unfortunately does not confirm.  You have read of these bridges, and seen pictures of them in the “Wonders of the World”; but then Nat has seen them with his own eyes:  he has literally walked over London Bridge, on his own feet!  You look at his very shoes in wonderment, and are surprised you do not find some startling difference between those shoes and your shoes.  But there is none,—­only yours are a trifle stouter in the welt.  You think Nat one of the fortunate boys of this world,—­born, as your old nurse used to say, with a gold spoon in his mouth.

Beside Nat there is a girl lives over the opposite side of the way, named Jenny,—­with an eye as black as a coal, and a half a year older than you, but about your height,—­whom you fancy amazingly.

She has any quantity of toys, that she lets you play with as if they were your own.  And she has an odd old uncle, who sometimes makes you stand up together, and then marries you after his fashion,—­much to the amusement of a grown-up house-maid, whenever she gets a peep at the performance.  And it makes you somewhat proud to hear her called your wife; and you wonder to yourself, dreamily, if it won’t be true some day or other.

——­Fie, Clarence, where is your split sixpence, and your blue ribbon!

Jenny is romantic, and talks of “Thaddeus of Warsaw” in a very touching manner, and promises to lend you the book.  She folds billets in a lover’s fashion, and practises love-knots upon her bonnet-strings.  She looks out of the corners of her eyes very often, and sighs.  She is frequently by herself, and pulls flowers to pieces.  She has great pity for middle-aged bachelors, and thinks them all disappointed men.

After a time she writes notes to you, begging you would answer them at the earliest possible moment, and signs herself—­“your attached Jenny.”  She takes the marriage farce of her uncle in a cold way, as trifling with a very serious subject, and looks tenderly at you.  She is very much shocked when her uncle offers to kiss her; and when he proposes it to you, she is equally indignant, but—­with a great change of color.

Nat says one day in a confidential conversation that it won’t do to marry a woman six months older than yourself; and this, coming from Nat who has been to London, rather staggers you.  You sometimes think that you would like to marry Madge and Jenny both, if the thing were possible, for Nat says they sometimes do so the other side of the ocean, though he has never seen it himself.

——­Ah, Clarence, you will have no such weakness as you grow older; you will find that Providence has charitably so tempered our affections, that every man of only ordinary nerve will be amply satisfied with a single wife.