When two people find pleasure in each other's conversation, surrounding circumstances are of little account. The most momentous questions have ere now been asked and answered during the gyrations of a waltz, or the intervals of a square dance. Pyramus and Thisbe were happy in whispering to each other through the chink in a paling, and my neighbour next door used to save shoeleather by chatting to a young lady at the other end of the town down the pipe of a telephone. That turned out badly, however, in the end, as one night his soft engaging whisper was replied to in the gruff and stormy tones of papa! who bade him have done with his nonsense, or he would put the d--d wire out of the house! He had done something of the same kind to my poor friend already. It was nothing new, therefore, if these two young people forgot for the time the stuffy little room in which they sat, and the gruesome army of medicine bottles, getting more and more numerous every day. They were as utterly content as though they had been sitting under one of the great shady trees of Eden, with only birds, flowers, and tame lions to listen to their discourse. The flowers, at least, they had in ever increasing profusion, as poor Colewort knew to his cost, in the sad devastation that fell on his most sacred preserves in the greenhouses of Inchbracken. Their sweetness brought something like the freshness of spring, (or was it only of hope?) into that close and frowsy place; even the fumes of damp and mouldiness fled before the breath of these children of dew and sunshine. At length there came a day, after many others that had been made bright with flowers, and fragrant with sweeter words, when Kenneth brought nothing in his hand but a bunch of violets, which he told her his mother had sent. A slip of paper was tied to them on which was written, 'For dearest Mary.' 'And so you may know, Mary,' he said, 'that everything between us is known at home, and you will be made welcome. My mother will come and see you, or if that cannot be managed she will write to you, after you have left Glen Effick; and I think you will overlook her not coming here. After the decided stand our family has taken against this church secession, she would rather not do that; and as you are going to be one of the family yourself, you will not wish us to stultify ourselves. That is what the old gentleman calls it at least, though I daresay it is nonsense. Still, he is an old man, and he is going to be very fond of you, so we must humour him.' There came a tear in Mary's eye, a smile to her lip, a blush, and words presently. She said exactly what was prettiest and nicest, or so thought Kenneth. Every nice girl knows what the words would be, they were just what she would say herself on a like occasion. As for the men, they will hear them, each for himself let us hope, when the time comes; therefore let us not rub the bloom from the plum by unwise anticipation.