Early on a sunripe evening in the month of June, “when the sun was shifting the shadows of the hills, and doffed the jaded oxenʼs yoke, distributing the love time from his waning chariot”, a forest dell, soft, clear, and calm, was listening to its thrushes. And more than at the throstleʼs flute, or flageolet of the blackbird, oaks and chestnuts pricked their ears at the voice of a gliding maiden. Where the young fern was pluming itself, arching, lifting, ruffling in filigree, light perspective, and depth of Gothic tracery, freaked by the nip of fairy fingers, tremulous as a coral grove in a crystal under–current, the shyer fronds still nestling home, uncertain of the world as yet, and coiled like catherine–wheels of green; where the cranesbill pushed like Zedekiah, and the succory reared its sky–blue windmill (open for business till 8 P.M.); where the violet now was rolled up in the seed–pod, like a stylite millipede, and the great bindweed, in its crenate horn, piped and fluted spirally, had forgotten the noonday flaunt: here, and over the nibbled sward, where the crisp dew was not risen yet, here came wandering the lightest foot that ever passed, but shook not, the moss–bed of the glow–worm. Under the rigorous oaks (so corded, seamed, and wenned with humps of grey), the stately, sleek, mouse–coloured beech, the dappled, moss–beridden ash, and the birch–tree peeling silverly, beneath the murmuring congress of the sunproof leaves; and again in the open breaks and alleys, where light and shade went see–saw; by and through and under all, feeling for and with every one, glanced, and gleamed, and glistened, and listened the loveliest being where all was love, the pet in the nest of nature. Of all the beauty in that sweet dell, where the foot of man came scarcely once in a year; of all the largesse of earth and heaven; of all the grace which is Natureʼs gratitude to her heavenly Father: there was not one, from the lily–bell to the wild rose and the heather–sprig, fit for a man to put in his bosom, and look at Amy Rosedew. It is told of a certain good manʼs child, whose lineage still is cherished, that when she was asked by her father (half–bantering, half in earnest) to tell him the reason why everybody loved her so, she cast down her eyes with a puzzled air, then opened them wide, as a child does to the sunrise of some great truth—“Father, perhaps it is because I love everybody so”. Lucan has it in a neater form: “amorem quæris amando”. And that was Amy Rosedewʼs secret, by herself undreamed of—lovely, because she could not help loving all our God has made. And of all the fair things He has made, and pronounced to be very good, since sunshine first began to gleam, to glow, and to fade away, what home has beauty found so bright, so rich in varied elegance, so playfully receptive of the light shed through creation—the light of the Makerʼs smile—as a young maiden, pure of heart, natural, true, and trusting?