her senior, and whom she never saw more than twice a year, than this fair, gay, gentle youth who was her almost daily companion. And no one suspected this secret, which was but dimly revealed to the young maiden’s self. But at length the passage of time brought the day when Margaret was to lose Franky also. Ralph Houston had graduated at Harvard, and was coming home for a visit previous to going out to make the grand tour. And Franky, now fully prepared to enter college, was to take his brother’s vacated rooms at the university. Nellie Houston had appropriated all her available funds in fitting out Franky for his new life, purchasing delicacies and luxuries in the way of fine and costly wearing apparel and elegant toilet apparatus, such as his father’s prudence or economy would have denied him; for never did a mother dote upon an only son with a fonder affection than did Nellie on her fair stepson, her “pretty boy,” as she called him, even after he was twenty years of age. Many of the presents she had purchased for her “boy,” such as a rich watch and chain, a costly seal ring, a heavily chased gold pencil case with a ruby setting, richly embroidered velvet fatigue cap and slippers, a handsome dressing gown, Paris kid gloves, linen cambric handkerchiefs, perfumery, scented soaps, etc.--articles, some of them, only fit for a lady’s toilet, she had smuggled into his trunks, unknown to his father; but some things accidentally fell under the observation of the colonel, who stared in astonishment. “Why, what upon the face of the earth, Nellie, do you think Frank wants with this gimcrack?” he said, raising the lid of an elegant inlaid dressing case. “He will want it at his morning exercises,” said Nellie. “Ah, it is you who are making a dandy of that boy! I shall, by and by, expect to hear, as the highest praise that can be bestowed upon him, that he is ‘ladylike.’” “Well, sir, your gallantry will not deny that is very high praise.” “Humph! yes! about as high as it would be to call a lady ‘manly.’” “Well, why shouldn’t that be high praise also? Why should not a man, with all his manliness, possess the delicate tastes of a woman? And why should not a woman, with all her womanliness, possess the courage and fortitude of a man? My Franky shall have lace shirt frills and collars and cuffs, if he likes; and I, if there’s to be a war with England, as they say, will go and ‘’list for a sojer,’ if I like,” said Nellie, petulantly. “Ha, ha, ha! You will certainly have an opportunity, my dear,” said the colonel; then, growing serious, “for a war can no longer be staved off.”