Aunt Deborah is fonder of John than she likes to confess. I know why, because I overheard my old nurse tell the housekeeper when I was quite a little thing; and what I hear, especially if I'm not intended to hear it, I never forget. There were three Miss Horsinghams, all with white hands--poor mamma, Aunt Deborah, and Aunt Dorcas. Now Aunt Deborah wanted to marry old David Jones (John's papa). I can just remember him--a snuffy little man with a brown wig, but perhaps he wasn't always so; and David Jones, who was frightened at Aunt Deborah's black eyes, thought he would rather marry Aunt Dorcas. Why the two sisters didn't toss up for him I can't think; but he _did_ marry Aunt Dorcas, and Aunt Deborah has been an old maid ever since. Sometimes even now she fixes her eyes on Cousin John, and then takes them off with a great sigh. It seems ridiculous in an old lady, but I don't know that it is so. That's the reason my cousin can do what he likes with Aunt Deborah; and that's the reason why, when he called on that rainy afternoon, he persuaded her to let me go down to Ascot with him all alone by our two selves the following day. How pleasant it is to wake on the morning of a gala day, to hear the carts and cabs rumbling and clattering in the streets, and to know that you must get up early, and be off directly after breakfast, and will have the whole livelong day to amuse yourself in. What a bright sunshiny morning it was, and what fun I had going with John in a hansom cab to Paddington--I like a hansom cab, it goes so fast--and then down to Windsor by the train in a carriage full of such smart people, some of whom I knew quite well by name, though not to speak to. The slang aristocracy, as they are called, muster in great force at Ascot. Nor could anything be more delightful than the drive through Windsor Forest up to the Course--such a neat phaeton and pair, and John and I like a regular Darby and Joan sitting side by side. Somehow that drive through Windsor Forest made me think of a great many things I never think of at other times. Though I was going to the races, and fully prepared for a day of gaiety and amusement, a half-melancholy feeling stole over me as we rolled along amongst those stately old trees, and that lovely scenery, and those picturesque little places set down in that abode of beauty. I thought how charming it would be to saunter about here in the early summer mornings or the still summer nights, and listen to the thrush and the blackbird and the nightingale in the copse; and then I thought I would not care to wander here _quite_ alone, and that a whisper might steal on my ear, sweeter than the note of the thrush and the nightingale; and that there might be a somebody without whom all that sylvan beauty would be a blank, but with whom any place would become a fairyland. And then I fell to wondering who that somebody would be; and I looked at Cousin John, and felt a little cross--which was very ungrateful; and a little