sphere of human language, and would necessarily lose their essence in
the attempt to communicate or record them. The little girl, perhaps,
had some mode of sympathy with these unuttered thoughts or reveries,
which grown people had ceased to have; at all events, she early learned
to respect them, and, at other times as free and playful as her Persian
kitten, she never in such circumstances ventured on any greater freedom
than to sit down quietly beside him, and endeavor to look as thoughtful
as the boy himself.

Once, slowly emerging from one of these waking reveries, little Ned
gazed about him, and saw Elsie sitting with this pretty pretence of
thoughtfulness and dreaminess in her little chair, close beside him;
now and then peeping under her eyelashes to note what changes might
come over his face. After looking at her a moment or two, he quietly
took her willing and warm little hand in his own, and led her up to the
Doctor.

The group, methinks, must have been a picturesque one, made up as it
was of several apparently discordant elements, each of which happened
to be so combined as to make a more effective whole. The beautiful
grave boy, with a little sword by his side and a feather in his hat, of
a brown complexion, slender, with his white brow and dark, thoughtful
eyes, so earnest upon some mysterious theme; the prettier little girl,
a blonde, round, rosy, so truly sympathetic with her companion's mood,
yet unconsciously turning all to sport by her attempt to assume one
similar;--these two standing at the grim Doctor's footstool; he
meanwhile, black, wild-bearded, heavy-browed, red-eyed, wrapped in his
faded dressing-gown, puffing out volumes of vapor from his long pipe,
and making, just at that instant, application to a tumbler, which, we
regret to say, was generally at his elbow, with some dark-colored