unfamiliar, almost uncanny, look in the moonlight, and might have
been the sorrowful visage of some marble nymph, lovelorn, with
unceasing grace. "Who--was with you?" she asked.

"The minister," replied young Evelina.

"Did he meet you?"

"He met me in the lane, Cousin Evelina."

"And he walked home with you across the field?"

"Yes, Cousin Evelina."

Then the two entered the house, and nothing more was said about the
matter. Young Evelina and Thomas Merriam agreed that their affection
was to be kept a secret for a while. "For," said young Evelina, "I
cannot leave Cousin Evelina yet a while, and I cannot have her
pestered with thinking about it, at least before another spring, when
she has the garden fairly growing again."

"That is nearly a whole year; it is August now," said Thomas, half
reproachfully, and he tightened his clasp of Evelina's slender
fingers.

"I cannot help that," replied Evelina. "It is for you to show
Christian patience more than I, Thomas. If you could have seen poor
Cousin Evelina, as I have seen her, through the long winter days,
when her garden is dead, and she has only the few plants in her
window left! When she is not watering and tending them she sits all