The day will vex you, and the night deny Your idle prayer: Shall I, across strange waters, hear your cry, And be aware? LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. C. G.; OR, LILLY'S EARRINGS. I. Not since the day on which we heard of Lee's surrender had there been such a commotion in the house. We who had grown up since that date had ceased to expect anything in the way of pleasure, for "the war" was a ghost that wouldn't be laid. Did we want fine dresses, we were asked where the money was coming from, now that Uncle David had lost all his property by the war; did we vainly long for a trip to a Northern city, we were consoled by the announcement that if it had not been for the war Uncle David would have taken us to Europe; if we complained that we had to keep our own rooms in order and sweep the parlors besides, a dignified reference was made to the former number of servants in the establishment; and when we roundly declared that life wasn't worth living without a dessert for dinner every day, somebody would say that it could hardly be expected we should set such a table as we did before the war. Positively, we didn't know how old we were, for Aunt Nanny declared that her memory wasn't a yard long on account of the trouble she had had during the war, and the family Bible had been "confiscated" by a pious private of taking propensities. Lilly was the older, however: we knew that. She was half a head taller than I, and had a dignified figure, though she looked like a child in the face and had a good many child's ways. She never knew what to do with her hands, for one thing, and when a little embarrassed she had a sweet cunning habit of putting one hand up to her mouth and laughing behind it. Her mouth was her prettiest feature. It had a bewitching way of dimpling at the corners, and the twenty-four pearls behind it had never been touched by the dentist. This, Aunt Nanny said, was the one good result of the war; for we had to eat boiled rice and drink cold water instead of plum-cake and coffee; so we kept our teeth sound.