I have been looking at Roy’s picture a long time, and wondering how he would like the new plan. I said something of the sort to her. “Why put any ‘would’ in that sentence?” she said, smiling. “It belongs in the present tense.” “Then I am sure he likes it,” I answered,--“he likes it,” and I said the words over till I was ready to cry for rest in their sweet sound. 22d. It is Roy’s birthday. But I have not spoken of it. We used to make a great deal of these little festivals,--but it is of no use to write about that. I am afraid I have been bearing it very badly all day. She noticed my face, but said nothing till to-night. Mrs. Bland was down stairs, and I had come away alone up here in the dark. I heard her asking for me, but would not go down. By and by Aunt Winifred knocked, and I let her in. “Mrs. Bland cannot understand why you don’t see her, Mary,” she said, gently. “You know you have not thanked her for those English violets that she sent the other day. I only thought I would remind you; she might feel a little pained.” “I can’t to-night,--not to-night, Aunt Winifred. You must excuse me to her somehow. I don’t want to go down.” “Is it that you don’t ‘want to,’ or _is_ it that you can’t?” she said, in that gentle, motherly way of hers, at which I can never take offence. “Mary, I wonder if Roy would not a little rather that you would go down?” It might have been Roy himself who spoke. I went down. IX. June 1. Aunt Winifred went to the office this morning, and met Dr. Bland, who walked home with her. He always likes to talk with her. A woman who knows something about fate, free-will, and foreknowledge absolute, who is not ignorant of politics, and talks intelligently of Agassiz’s latest fossil, who can understand a German quotation, and has heard of Strauss and Neander, who can dash her sprightliness ably against his old dry bones of metaphysics and theology, yet never speak an accent above that essentially womanly voice of hers, is, I imagine, a phenomenon in his social experience. I was sitting at the window when they came up and stopped at the gate. Dr. Bland lifted his hat to me in his grave way, talking the while; somewhat eagerly, too, I could see. Aunt Winifred answered him with a peculiar smile and a few low words that I could not hear. “But, my dear madam,” he said, “the glory of God, you see, the glory of God is the primary consideration.” “But the glory of God _involves_ these lesser glories, as a sidereal system, though a splendid whole, exists by the multiplied differing of one star from another star. Ah, Dr. Bland, you make a grand abstraction out of it, but it makes me cold,”--she shivered, half playfully, half involuntarily,--“it makes me cold. I am very much alive and human; and Christ was human God.” She came in smiling a little sadly, and stood by me, watching the minister walk over the hill. “How much does that man love his wife and children?” she asked abruptly. “A good deal. Why?”