I could tell of many subsequent events—of continued friendship with the Barrs, of Mary Baxendell's wedding, five years ago, the bridegroom being Herbert Winn, Lawrence's best man at ours; of the fact that Lady Minshull and I have been on visiting terms for five-and-twenty years, and that dear Mrs. Marsden still lives, and is the most indulgent and handsomest of grandmammas and old ladies. But even these happy particulars do not stand out with the same prominence in my life's story as those I have already told about. And I think most girls will agree with me, that the day of days in my life was that which gave me him who has been the beloved husband of eight-and-twenty years. I reckon that on it, I passed my sixth milestone. FINISHED AT CHRISTMAS. CHAPTER I. A LITTLE love story! This is what I am going to tell. I hope no one who reads this plain statement of my intentions will be shocked thereat, and close the book as though the subject ought to be tabooed in these pages. Yet there are people, and good women amongst the number, who so little understand that love, if it be worthy of the name, means beauty and purity, and embraces the very holiest and best in our human nature, that they would banish the word from every story that is written for the young. They would bid an old wife and mother like me lay down her pen and refrain from using it on the sweetest theme that creation can furnish. Such readers as these would link the idea of love rather with the fallen and sinful state of humanity, forgetting that the first pair of lovers were also the first created of mankind, and were such before sin possessed a name, much less a place in Paradise. Would the silencing of tongues and the laying down of pens keep young hearts from throbbing, or silence the voice which God Himself has placed in every breast and endowed with eloquence? Far, far better for us older folk to treat the subject with tender reverence, and manifest our loving sympathy with our young ones who are just placing girlish feet on the enchanted ground which we trod in the far-away past. The subject is, perhaps, the only one which has an interest for people of every nation, age, and condition—which has in it the "touch of Nature that makes the whole world kin." It links the queen and her humblest waiting-damsel. It joins in its mysterious bonds the monarch who can bestow a crown, and the peasant who follows the plough and dreams of the day when he can call a tiny thatched cottage his home, and prepare it as a fitting nest for his village playmate who has just passed him, poising a well-filled pail upon her head. The glimpse of her bright young face and the kindly smile of her brown eyes have put new energy into the toiler, and he resumes his work, albeit a moment before he was watching the lengthening shadows, and longing for the moment when he should unyoke the weary horses and take the homeward way.