It was one summer afternoon in 1847 that Jenny first began to improve “The Poetical Works of Rogers, Campbell, J. Montgomery, Lamb and Kirke White.” At three o’clock Jenny had been out playing--keeping the porch and the front gate well in sight, for she knew that not for nothing had Esther put on her pearl necklace and her blue sash and spent three-quarters of an hour over her hair. Jenny’s suspicions were justified and her vigilance rewarded. At four o’clock the front gate clicked and the gravel walk resounded under a manly tread. Charlie Quigley, in a high stock, a flowered waistcoat, a long black coat, tight blue trousers and a tall silk hat, came to call on Esther. And he brought a gift. Was it a box of candy? If so Jenny would, as a dutiful sister, help to entertain the company. She would wait--Esther was unwrapping the present. No, it was not a box of candy--it was a book. And it was not even a novel, it was a book of poetry, of all things in the world! How could that Charlie Quigley be so silly? Well, Jenny lost interest in Charlie and his gift for a while. She rolled her hoop and played with the puppy while Esther and Charlie sat on the porch and looked at the foolish book. When Jenny came up on the porch, toward sunset, they had gone into the parlour. They had left the book open face downward on a bench, open to Thomas Campbell’s “Song,” beginning “Oh, how hard it is to find The one just suited to our mind”--certain lines of which Charlie had roguishly underscored. Jenny turned the pages of the book, but found therein little entertainment. At length, however, she came upon “Morning in the Alps,” with its blank and inviting reverse. Among the jackstones in her pocket was the stub of a pencil, and soon that pencil was at its predestined task of depicting the event of the afternoon--for my edification some threescore years later. Jenny drew a side view of the broad stone steps, with a little of the railings and Grecian pillars. She drew the locust tree, and since she knew that there was a robin’s nest in it, she outlined two little birds against the skyey background. She drew Esther, grand in her hoopskirts, necklace, curls and blue sash--no, it wasn’t blue, it was green plaid, and the fabric was satin, for, as I live, there is a faded corner of it in this very book, sentimentally cut off and placed there by Esther herself! Why was Esther so particular about saving a fragment of that sash? Was this really a momentous afternoon? Was this the sash that Charlie’s black broadcloth sleeve surrounded when Esther consented to become Mrs. Quigley? And were they married, and did Charlie’s friends all make flat jokes about his claiming the hand of Hand?