which is still young when life is waning, which man's love and
motherhood cannot displace nor death annihilate; a friendship which is
not the solitary affection of an empty heart, nor the deepest affection
of a full one, but which nevertheless lightens the burdens of this world
and lays its pure hand upon the next.

Such a friendship, very deep, very tender, existed between Rachel West
and Hester Gresley. It dated back from the nursery days, when Hester and
Rachel solemnly eyed each other, and then made acquaintance in the dark
gardens of Portman Square, into which Hester introduced a fortified
castle with a captive princess in it, and a rescuing prince and a
dragon, and several other ingredients of romance to the awed amazement
of Rachel--stolid, solid, silent Rachel--who loved all two and four
legged creatures, but who never made them talk to each other as Hester
did. And Hester, in blue serge, told Rachel, in crimson velvet, as they
walked hand in hand in front of their nursery-maids, what the London
sparrows said to each other in the gutters, and how they considered the
gravel path in the square was a deep river suitable to bathe in. And
when the spring was coming, and the prince had rescued the princess so
often from the dungeon in the laurel-bushes that Hester was tired of it,
she told Rachel how the elms were always sighing because they were shut
up in town, and how they went out every night with their roots into the
green country to see their friends, and came back, oh! so early in the
morning, before any one was awake to miss them. And Rachel's heart
yearned after Hester, and she gave her her red horse and the tin duck
and magnet, and Hester made stories about them all.

At last the day came when Rachel's mother, who had long viewed the
intimacy with complacency, presented her compliments, in a note-sheet
with two immense gilt crests on it, to Hester's aunt, and requested that