The third of June once more. Rain fell all yesterday, all last night. This morning earth and sky are dark and chill. The plants are bowed down, and no wind releases them from their burden of large white drops. About the yard the red-rose bushes fall away from the fences, the lilacs stand with their purple clusters hanging down as heavily as clusters of purple grapes. I hear the young orioles calling drearily from wet nests under dripping boughs. A plaintive piping of lost little chickens comes from the long grass. How unlike the day is to the third of June two years ago. I was in the strawberry bed that crystalline morning; Georgiana came to the window, and I beheld her for the first time. How unlike the same day one year back. Again I was in the strawberry bed, again Georgiana came to window and spoke to me as before. This morning as I tipped into her room where she lay in bed, she turned her face to me on the pillow, and for the third time she said, fondly; "Old man, are you the gardener?" The sky being so blanketed with cloud, although the shutters were open only a faint gray light filled the room. It was the first day that she had been well enough to have it done; but now the bed in which Georgiana lay was spread with the most beautiful draperies of white; the pillows were rich with needle-work and lace, and for the first time she had put on the badge of her new dignity, a little white cap of ribbons and lace, the long wide streamers of which, edged with lace, lay out upon the counterpane like bauds of the most delicate frost. The fingers of one hand rested lightly on the child beside her, as though she were counting the pulse of its oncoming life. Out in the yard the lilies of the valley, slipping out of their cool sheaths of green leaves, were not more white, more fresh. And surely Georgiana's gayety is the unconquerable gayety of the world, the youthfulness of youth immortal. I went over to her with the strange new awe I feel at my union with the young mother, where hitherto there has but been a union with the woman I love. She stretched out her hands to me, almost hidden under the lace of her sleeves, and drew my face down against hers, as she said in my ear, "_Now_ you are the old Adam!" When she released me, she bent over the child and added, reproachfully, "You haven't paid the least attention to the baby yet." "I haven't noticed that the baby has bestowed the least attention upon me. He is the youngest." "He is the guest of the house! It is your duty to speak to him first." "He doesn't act like a guest in my house. He behaves as though he owned it. I'm nobody since he arrived--not even his body-servant." Georgiana, who was still bending over the child, glanced up with a look of confidential, whimsical distress. "How could anything so old be born so young!"