"So you _do_ love him, Gay?" said Aunt Lavinia, who for all her goodness had on occasion a most unsaintly twinkle in her eye, as at that moment. "Auntie, _who_ would love a man who keeps your heart in your mouth, and always--always in a drivelling state of terror that he'll be brought home to you in pieces, just alive in the biggest piece? I have a feeling that the mere thought that _I expect_ him to have an accident every time, will bring about one! I'd rather be an old maid (I should never make a delightful one like you) and dry-nurse Heron for the rest of my life, than live in such a purgatory of hopes and fears." "Well, Gay," said Aunt Lavinia, "he would die in the way he liked, wouldn't he? And real love consists, not in making others do what we like, but in wanting them to be happy, so long as it is in no disgraceful way, let us suffer what we may. I hate racing, as you know--but then I don't like your Trotting at all either, my dear"--and shook her head, Gay was on the wrong tack, but only going through the mill would set her on the right one. Gay sighed. She had long ago found that Trotting, like marriage, "takes a lot of kidding," and the less she enjoyed it, the more she "kidded," but not to herself, being by now very sick of the fad that she had so light-heartedly taken up. The horses themselves, the actual racing part, still appealed to her; she thought their action the prettiest possible sight, and never lost her pleasure in seeing them go--loved a close finish--it was the surroundings that disgusted her. "Anyway, my fad is not dangerous to life--like Chris's," she said, then suddenly remembered the ugly fall she had witnessed from the tiny perch on Rensslaer's borrowed sulky, and the life-long injury to the back that ensued. "Are you not both a little selfish, my dear?" said Lavinia. "Laddie, (her pet-name for Chris) won't give up his racing, nor you your trotting--but there is more reason in his asking the sacrifice from you, than your demanding it from him. His mother did not." "Oh!" cried Gay passionately, "knowing what it must have cost her, how could he do it?" "I believe there is a special Heaven to which good sons go," said Lavinia, softly putting the question by. "I don't say good mothers--that's natural--but to be a perfect son, and yet to be a man at all points--a man of the world even--like Chris--that's rare--rare and most beautiful." Then Lavinia confided to Gay with a blush that the only reason she ever regretted not having married--and at times she regretted it intensely--was because she wanted a son--a son like Chris. "You and his mother were great friends," said Gay very gently.