“I love a chill, rainy evening just at this season of the year,” said Sophie, “because it makes it necessary to have a fire, and to gather around it with our work.” And then Raymond, smiling, drew from his pocket a book. “What is it, Raymond?” exclaimed both ladies in a breath,—(those were not the days of cheap literature, reader, nor was that the neighborhood)—in those days, and in that country, all “books” were “books.” “What is it, Raymond?” And Raymond turned the back, and held it to them. Both read in a breath—“Childe Harold,”—and both exclaimed in a breath, “Read to us, Raymond.” And Raymond opened the book, while Hagar pulled her kitten’s ear, and made it spit and bite, and Sophie counted the stitches of her knitting, and commenced reading, and there we will leave them for the present. CHAPTER XXI. HAGAR’S BRIDAL. ‘Bride, upon thy marriage day, Did the fluttering of thy breath Speak of joy or woe beneath? And the hue that went and came O’er thy cheek like wavering flame, Flowed that crimson from the unrest Or the gladness of thy breast?’ HEMANS. Poor Gusty had walked about several days in a stupor, “stunned by a sockdologer,” he said, into a stupor from which nothing could arouse him; he longed for the time when he should be ordered to sea, but alas! that time was very distant yet, he feared. He had never been at the Hall since what he called “that fatal evening.” Emily was happy that an end was put to his hopes of Hagar at any cost of present pain to him. “Gusty,” said she one morning, “do you know Hagar is to be married week after next?” “Yes, mother.” “Do you know that Sophie wants very much to get Rosalia home to the wedding?” “Does she?” “Yes—but unluckily no one seems to be travelling down in this direction from the neighborhood of her school, so that she cannot get an escort; Sophie cannot leave home to go after her, and she has no one she can send.” “Let me go! I carried her to school, you know; let me go and bring her home!” exclaimed Gusty, jumping up, very glad of a job that would stir his blood into a little circulation.