of his growing occupations, or that any preoccupation was visible except to the eye of love, which is quick to see all moods.  These were indeed happy days, full of the brightness of an expanding prosperity and unlimited possibilities of the enjoyment of life.  It was in obedience to her natural instinct, and not yet a feeling of compensation and propitiation, that enlisted Margaret in the city charities, connection with which was a fashionable self-entertainment with some, and a means of social promotion with others.  My wife came home a little weary with so much of the world, but, on the whole, impressed with Margaret’s good-fortune.  Henderson in his own house was the soul of consideration and hospitality, and Margaret was blooming in the beauty that shines in satisfied desire.

XIII

It is so painful to shrink, and so delightful to grow!  Every one knows the renovation of feeling—­often mistaken for a moral renewal—­when the worn dress of the day is exchanged for the fresh evening toilet.  The expansiveness of prosperity has a like effect, though the moralist is always piping about the beneficent uses of adversity.  The moralist is, of course, right, time enough given; but what does the tree, putting out its tender green leaves to the wooing of the south wind, care for the moralist?  How charming the world is when you go with it, and not against it!

It was better than Margaret had thought.  When she came to Washington in the winter season the beautiful city seemed to welcome her and respond to the gayety of her spirit.  It was so open, cheerful, hospitable, in the appearance of its smooth, broad avenues and pretty little parks, with the bronze statues which all looked noble—­in the moonlight; it was such a combination and piquant contrast of shabby ease and stately elegance —­negro cabins and stone mansions, picket-fences and sheds, and flower-banked terraces before rows of residences which bespoke wealth and refinement.  The very aspect of the street population was novel; compared to New York, the city was as silent as a country village, and the passers, who have the fashion of walking in the middle of the street upon the asphalt as freely as upon the sidewalks, had a sort of busy leisureliness, the natural air of thousands of officials hived in offices for a few hours and then left in irresponsible idleness.  But what most distinguished the town, after all, in Margaret’s first glimpse of it, was the swarming negro population pervading every part of it—­the slouching plantation negro, the smart mulatto girl with gay raiment and mincing step, the old-time auntie, the brisk waiter-boy with uncertain eye, the washerwoman, the hawkers and fruiterers, the loafing strollers of both sexes—­carrying everywhere color, abandon, a certain picturesqueness and irresponsibility and good-nature, and a sense of moral relaxation in a too strict and duty-ridden world.