“Not exactly in wishing it, my dear,” returned Mr. Merritt, “but what is now a matter of choice may, ere long, be necessity. True, it would cost a severe trial to separate from the friends whom we have so long known and loved, and to exchange the delights of their society for a wilderness, but _we_ would be together still.” “And we are all the world to each other,” exclaimed his wife, forgetting her sadness for a moment, in the devotion which, twenty years after marriage, was rather strengthened than subdued. “You leave Emma and me out of the question altogether, mother,” said little George, who, though apparently absorbed in his book, had been listening all the while. “No, my love, you are both very dear to your parents;” and she bent over him and kissed his brow, the very image of his father’s. “Forgive me, mother, I was only jesting,” returned George, quite grieved, yet wondering why his mother should have taken it so seriously. “Are we surely going to live in Illinois, mother?” continued George, after a pause, “among the prairies and all? O how glad I shall be; I do want to see a prairie.” “Why, George, don’t you care about leaving your schoolmates and playfellows?” asked his sister reproachfully. “Oh, yes! I forgot, I shall be very sorry. I shall be sorrier though for poor William Warden. He will be so grieved when he hears that Emma is going away, and he will never see her any more.” “Hush! young chatterbox,” retorted his sister, at the same time administering him a gentle admonition with her thimbled finger, and blushing scarlet. The infant sleeper happened to wake up at this juncture, and made sundry noisy intimations from the cradle; otherwise Mrs. Merritt might have noticed the sudden expression of pain that passed over her husband’s features, at what George had said concerning William Warden. As for Miss Emma, she hurried to the cradle on the first demonstration, and became completely wrapt in a lullaby, which she sung as earnestly as though George had made no revelation, and William Warden was all a fable. Mr. Merritt resumed his newspaper, and George his lesson. CHAPTER II. RETROSPECTIVE.