Cousin Delight looked up; and her white ruffling, that she was daintily
hemstitching, fell to her lap, as she looked, still with a certain wide
intentness in her eyes, upon the pleasant window, and the bright, fresh
things it framed. Not the least bright and fresh among them was the
human creature in her early girlhood, tender and pleasant in its
beautiful leafage, but waiting, like any other young and growing life,
to prove what sort of flower should come of it.

"Now you've got one of your 'thoughts,' Cousin Delight! I see it
'biggening,' as Elspie says." Leslie turned round, with her little green
watering-pot suspended in her hand, waiting for the thought.

To have a thought, and to give it, were nearly simultaneous things with
Cousin Delight; so true, so pure, so unselfish, so made to give,--like
perfume or music, which cannot be, and be withheld,--were thoughts with
her.

I must say a word, before I go further, of Delight Goldthwaite. I think
of her as of quite a young person; you, youthful readers, would
doubtless have declared that she was old,--very old, at least for a
young lady. She was twenty-eight, at this time of which I write; Leslie,
her young cousin, was just "past the half, and catching up," as she said
herself,--being fifteen. Leslie's mother called Miss Goldthwaite,
playfully, "Ladies' Delight;" and, taking up the idea, half her women
friends knew her by this significant and epigrammatic title. There was
something doubly pertinent in it. She made you think at once of nothing
so much as heart's-ease,--a garden heart's-ease, that flower of many
names; not of the frail, scentless, wild wood-violet,--she had been
cultured to something larger. The violet nature was there, colored and