blooming out before her very eyes, from a stout, stocky, frowzy child,
with coarse red cheeks and knuckles like a bootblack, into a tall,
slender girl, whose oval face was as regular as a conic section, and
whose movements were as swift, strong, and graceful, when she forgot
herself, as those of a race-horse. There were still the ties of habit
and romance between them. Azalea, whose brother was a train-boy on the
Lake Shore road, had a constant supply of light literature, which the
girls devoured in the long intervals of their studies. But even the
romance of Miss Matchin had undergone a change. While Azalea still
dreamed of dark-eyed princes, lords of tropical islands, and fierce and
tender warriors who should shoot for her the mountain eagle for his
plumes, listen with her to the bulbul's song in valleys of roses, or
hew out a throne for her in some vague and ungeographical empire, the
reveries of Miss Maud grew more and more mundane and reasonable. She
was too strong and well to dream much; her only visions were of a rich
man who should love her for her fine eyes. She would meet him in some
simple and casual way; he would fall in love at sight, and speedily
prosper in his wooing; they would be married,--privately, for Maud
blushed and burned to think of her home at such times,--and then they
would go to New York to live. She never wasted conjecture on the age,
the looks, the manner of being of this possible hero. Her mind
intoxicated itself with the thought of his wealth. She went one day to
the Public Library to read the articles on Rothschild and Astor in the
encyclopedias. She even tried to read the editorial articles on gold
and silver in the Ohio papers.

She delighted in the New York society journals. She would pore for
hours over those wonderful columns which described the weddings and the
receptions of rich tobacconists and stock-brokers, with lists of names
which she read with infinite gusto. At first, all the names were the