Menie hid her face in her mother’s lap. Prepare--not the bridal garments, the household supplies--something more momentous, and of greater delicacy--the mind and the heart; and if this must always be something solemn and important, whatever the circumstances, how much more so to Menie, whose path had been crossed already by such a spectre? She sat there, her eyes covered with her hands, her head bowing down upon her mother’s knee; but the heavy doubt had flown from her, leaving nothing but lighter cloudy shadows--maidenly fears and tremblings--in her way. Few hearts were more honest than Menie’s, few more wistfully desirous of doing well; and now it is with no serious anticipations of evil, but only with the natural thrill and tremor, the natural excitement of so great an epoch drawing close at hand, that Menie’s fingers close with a startled pressure on her mother’s hand, as she is bidden prepare. What is this that has befallen little July Home? There never were such throngs of unaccountable blushes, such a suffusion of simple surprise. Something is on her lips perpetually, which she does not venture to speak--some rare piece of intelligence, which July cannot but marvel at herself in silent wonder, and which she trembles to think Menie and “a’body else” will marvel at still more. Withdrawing silently into dark corners, sitting there doing nothing, in long fits of reverie, quite unusual with July; coming forward so conscious and guilty, when called upon; and now, at this earliest opportunity, throwing her arms round Menie Laurie’s neck, and hiding her little flushed and agitated face upon Menie’s shoulder. What has befallen July Home? “Do you think it’s a’ true, Menie? He wouldna say what he didna mean: but I think it’s for our Randall’s sake--it canna be for me!” For July has not the faintest idea, as she lets this soft silken hair of hers fall down on her cheek without an effort to restrain it, that Johnnie Lithgow would not barter one smile upon that trembling child’s lip of hers for all the Randalls in the world. “He says he’ll go to the Hill, and tell them a’ at hame,” said July. “Eh, Menie, what will they say? And he’s to tell Randall first of all. I wish I was away, no to see Randall, Menie; he’ll just laugh, and think it’s no true--for I see mysel it canna be for me!” “It is for you, July; you must not think anything else; there is nobody in the world like you to Johnnie Lithgow.” And slowly July’s head is raised--a bright shy look of wonder gradually growing into conviction, a sudden waking of higher thought and deeper feeling in the open simple face; a sudden flush of crimson--the woman’s blush--and July withdrew herself from her friend’s embrace, and stole a little apart into the shadow, and wept a few tears. Was it true? For her, and not for another! But it is a long time before this grand discovery can look a truth, and real, to July’s humble eyes.