not so full of fancies! Kate, you are a wise and discreet little lady,
and we understand each other. Did I say too much?"

Just then Alice looked back.

"Chloe is the one who sings madrigals to-night, Uncle; she is going to
read Colin a lesson"; and, sitting down at the piano, she let her
hands run over the keys and burst out joyously into that variation of
Raleigh's pretty pastoral song,--


"Shepherd, what's Love? I prithee tell."
"It is a fountain and a well,
Where pleasure and repentance dwell;
And this is Love, as I've heard tell:
Repentance, repentance, repentance!"



TALK NUMBER THREE.


Five years have passed since Alice sat at Uncle John's feet and
listened to his words that gave lessons of wisdom while they seemed
only to amuse; and now she sits again on the low stool, looking up in
his face, while I stand behind him and look down on her, marking the
changes that those years have wrought. She has come back to us, our
own Alice still,--but how different from the impetuous, impulsive girl
who left us five years ago! Her face has lost its early freshness,
though it seems to me lovelier than before, in its matured, womanly