It was the second summer after Louisa’s initiation into the gay world that the Oakly family were once more assembled at Oak Villa, their annual resort during the warm months of July and August. With no taste for reading, a mind not attuned for meditation, and the querulousness of an _ungraceful_ old age gradually stealing upon him, Mr. Oakly found the time drag most wearily on amid those quiet groves. In his extremity an idea suddenly flashed across his brain, which he eagerly caught at, as it promised to relieve somewhat of that tedious vacuum between those hours when such a man and happiness may alone be said to look each other in the face: viz., the hour of meals—and this was to summon an artist to the villa, for the purpose of decorating the walls of the saloon with the portraits of its inmates. He had not thought of it before, but, quite luckily, it now occurred to him that he already had the address of a young artist in his pocket, for whom some friend of struggling genius had solicited patronage. Now he could kill two birds with one stone, as it were, secure the plaudits of the world by taking the artist by the hand in so flattering a manner, and at the same time pull away the drag from the wheels of time. He looked at the card—“Walter Evertson,”—and to Walter Evertson did he immediately address a letter, requesting his presence at the villa. He came—a fine, handsome youth of three-and-twenty, with an eye like an eagle, and hair dark as a starless night—a dangerous companion, we must allow, for the gentle Louisa. He was met with condescending affability made most apparent by the master of the house, and by Mrs. Oakly, who seldom manifested much interest in any thing, with cool indifference. No wonder, then, that he turned with a thrill of pleasure tingling his heart-strings, to the gentle Louisa, whose manners, at once so courteous and refined, offered so agreeable a contrast.