The foregoing soliloquy passed through my mind as I lay upon the bed where I had thrown myself after leaving the children’s room.  Whatever else attempted to affect me mentally found my mind a blank until the next morning, when I awoke to realize that I had dropped asleep just where I fell, and that I had spent nearly twelve hours lying across a bed in an uncomfortable position, and without removing my daily attire.  My next impression was that quite a bulky letter had been pushed under my chamber-door.  Could it be that my darling—­I hastily seized the envelope and found it addressed in my sister’s writing, and promising a more voluminous letter than that lady had ever before honored me with.  I opened it, dropping an enclosure which doubtless was a list of necessities which I would please pack, etc., and read as follows:—­

“July 1, 1875.

“My dear old brother:—­Wouldn’t I like to give you the warmest of sisterly hugs?  I can’t believe it, and yet I’m in ecstasies over it.  To think that you should have got that perfection of a girl, who has declined so many great catches—­you, my sober, business-like, unromantic big brother—­oh, it’s too wonderful!  But now I think of it, you’re just the people for each other.  I’d like to say that it’s just what I’d always longed for, and that I invited you to Hillcrest to bring it about; but the trouble with such a story would be that it wouldn’t have a word of truth in it.  You always did have a faculty of doing just what you pleased, and what nobody ever expected you to do, but now you’ve exceeded yourself.

“And to think that my little darlings played an important part in bringing it all about!  I shall take the credit for that, for if it hadn’t been for me, who would have helped you, sir?  I shall expect you to remember both of them handsomely at Christmas.

“I don’t believe I’m guilty of a breach of confidence in sending the enclosed, which I have just received from my sister-in-law that is to be.  It will tell you some causes of your success of which you, with a man’s conceit, haven’t imagined for a minute, and it will tell you, too, of a maiden’s first and natural fear under such circumstances,—­a fear which I know that you, with your honest, generous heart, will hasten to dispel.  As you’re a man, you’re quite likely to be too stupid to read what’s written between the lines; so I’d better tell you that Alice’s fear is that in letting herself go so easily she may have seemed to lack proper reserve and self-respect.  You don’t need to be told that no woman alive has more of these very qualities.

“Bless your dear old heart, Harry,—­you deserve to be shaken to death if you’re not the happiest man alive.  I must hurry home and see you both with my own eyes, and learn to believe that all this wonderful glorious thing has come to pass.  Give Alice a sister’s kiss from me (if you know how to give more than one kind), and give my cherubs a hundred each from the mother that wants to see them so much.