"Not Aunt Sarah herself, although she considered it honest praise. I overheard it accidentally from my window, and I can assure you properly appreciated the compliment, which, by the way, was more in the tone than the words." "And you were thereby piqued to a different style of behavior. Bravo! did ever another seed so worthless bring forth so rich a harvest? I am glad I said it! Here is the boat." It was a pretty little affair--Charley's property and care, and he was already in his seat at the bow, oar in hand. Philip helped Sarah in, placed Jeannie beside her, and stationing himself upon the middle bench took up a second pair of oars. A noiseless dip of the four, and the craft glided out into the stream, then up against the tide, the water rippling into a foamy wake on either side of the sharp bow. A row was now the regular sequel to the day's enjoyments, and to Jeannie, at least, the climax of its pleasures. "Pull that way, please, Mr. Benson!" she cried. "There! right through that beautiful red water!" A skilful sweep brought them to the spot designated, but the crimson deserted the wave as they neared it, and left dull gray in its stead. "It is too bad!" complained the child, pointing back to the track of their boat, quivering amidst the fickle radiance she had thought to reach by this change of course. "It is behind us and before us--everywhere but where we are!" "Is there a moral in that?" questioned Philip, smiling at Sarah. "Perhaps so." A fortnight before, how assured would have been her reply! How gloomy her recognition of the analogy! Changed as was her mood, a shade fell over her countenance. Was it of apprehension, and did Philip thus interpret it? "I could not love life and this fair world as I do, if I conceded this to be universally true," he said. "That there comes, sometimes, a glory to the present, besides which the hues of past and future fade and are forgotten, I must and will believe. Such, it seems to me, must be the rapture of reciprocal and acknowledged affection; the joy of reunion after long separation from the beloved one; the bliss of reconciliation after estrangement. Have you ever thought how much happier we would be if we were to live only in the Now we have, and never strain our eyes with searching for, the lights and shades of what may be before us, or with 'mournful looking' after what is gone?" "Yet is this possible?" asked Sarah, earnestly. "Does not the very constitution of our natures forbid it? To me that would be a miserably tame, dead-level existence over which Hope sheds no enchanting illusions; like this river, as we saw it three days ago, cold and sombre as the rain-clouds that hung above it. Oh, no! give me anything but the chill, neutral tint of such a life as thousands are content to lead--people who expect nothing, fear nothing--I had almost said, feel nothing!"