this Daw is a rara avis! Keep up your spirits, my boy, until I
write you another letter--and send me along word how's your leg.


V.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

August 13, 1872.

The party, my dear Jack, was as dreary as possible. A lieutenant of
the navy, the rector of the Episcopal Church at Stillwater, and a
society swell from Nahant. The lieutenant looked as if he had
swallowed a couple of his buttons, and found the bullion rather
indigestible; the rector was a pensive youth, of the daffydowndilly
sort; and the swell from Nahant was a very weak tidal wave indeed.
The women were much better, as they always are; the two Miss
Kingsburys of Philadelphia, staying at the Seashell House, two
bright and engaging girls. But Marjorie Daw!

The company broke up soon after tea, and I remained to smoke a
cigar with the colonel on the piazza. It was like seeing a picture,
to see Miss Marjorie hovering around the old soldier, and doing a
hundred gracious little things for him. She brought the cigars and
lighted the tapers with her own delicate fingers, in the most
enchanting fashion. As we sat there, she came and went in the
summer twilight, and seemed, with her white dress and pale gold
hair, like some lovely phantom that had sprung into existence
out of the smokewreaths. If she had melted into air, like the
statue of Galatea in the play, I should have been more sorry than