Hazel was awakened next morning by an unaccustomed sound that seemed for some time to have penetrated her sleep-wrapped senses, without rousing them to full consciousness. She lay still, and listened with all her ears; but there was no renewal of the disturbance, and she was about to compose herself to sleep—the clock upon the mantel-shelf telling her she might do so for another half-hour—when the unwonted strains began again. They were not those of a donkey braying, nor of a horse whinnying, nor of a cock crowing, but of a young man singing. It was not a very tuneful performance, but it was most fervently and expressively rendered; and Hazel, as it dawned upon her that she was the subject of the morning serenade, hearkened with very mixed emotions. "I suppose he _considers_ it serenading," she said to herself; and she experienced a feeling of importance, intermingled with awe. "I thought they had gone out of fashion," she meditated. "Certainly they have in England: I suppose Digby’s continental trips have given him foreign notions." I stand at your window sighing As the weary hours go by, And the time is slowly dying "Horribly," Hazel’s reflections broke in. "Why don’t you hurry up, or get some one to mark it for you?" That once too quick did fly. "What a good thing that he has not a guitar! It would make a dreadful jumble. You need not wail so, if the pain I have caused you is so exquisite," she apostrophised the anguished lover; and scorn took possession of her. "If you were a cat, one would pour water on you. I am not sure if one would not be justified in thinking you were a cat," and her eyes sparkled with fun and mischief. Despite the foreign notions laid to his charge, the young man’s sense of the fitness of things kept him from standing long under one window in particular, even while the beauty of the flowering shrub beneath the guest-chamber gave excuse for a somewhat lingering gait in passing; so that it was only now and again that Hazel caught a connected line or two of the impassioned refrain; while his sisters, not to mention his father and mother, were regaled with a goodly, if not quite with an even share, till Francis thrust a betousled head from his window and asked his brother to "stow it," a request which caused the disconsolate Digby to wander farther from the house, and to break into fresh melody among the trees that skirted the lawn. Hazel had unexpected good fortune, in that the morning was passed in almost uninterrupted silence; for, breakfast over, Mr. Travers and his sons furnished themselves with fishing-tackle and, begging the girls to join the expedition and witness sport, the party made their way down to the river side and were soon ranged along its near bank. Hazel was not long in seizing the opportunity thus offered, and was soon lost in her own reflections.