Young folks don't make so much of dinner as old ones at any time, and this dinner was an unusually dull one. Sam was silent and thoughtful, and talked little; Alice, too, was not quite herself. Jim, as usual, ate like a hero, but talked little; so the conversation was principally carried on by Halbert, in the narrative style, who really made himself very useful and agreeable, and I am afraid they would have been a very "slow" party without him. Soon after the serious business of eating was over, Jim said,-- "Alice, I wonder what the Governor will say?" "About what, brother?" "About my going soldiering." "Save us! What new crotchet is this?" "Only that I'm going to bother the Governor, till he gets me a commission in the army." "Are you really serious, Jim?" "I never was more so in my life." "So, Mr. Halbert," said Alice, looking round at him, "you are only come to take my brother away from me!" "I assure you, Miss Brentwood, that I have only aided and abetted: the idea was his own." "Well, well, I see how it is;--we were too happy I suppose." "But, Alice," said Jim, "won't you be proud to see your brother a good soldier?" "Proud! I was always proud of you. But I wish the idea had never come into your head. If it was in war time I would say nothing, but now it is very different. Well, gentlemen, I shall leave you to your wine. Mr. Halbert, I like you very much, but I wish you hadn't turned Jim's head." She left them, and walked down the garden; through the twilight among the vines, which were dropping their yellow leaves lightly on the turf before the breath of the autumn evening. So Jim was going,--going to be killed probably, or only coming back after ten years' absence, "full of strange oaths and bearded like a pard!" She knew well how her father would jump at his first hint of being a soldier, and would move heaven and earth to get him a commission,--yes, he would go--her own darling, funny, handsome Jim, and she would be left all alone. No, not quite! There is a step on the path behind her that she knows; there is an arm round her waist which was never there before, and yet she starts not as a low voice in her ear says,-- "Alice, my love, my darling, I have come after you to tell you that you are dearer to me than my life, and all the world besides. Can you love me half as well as I love you? Alice, will you be my wife?" What answer? Her hands pressed to her face, with flood of happy tears, she only says,-- "Oh! I'm so happy, Sam! So glad, so glad!" Pipe up there, golden-voiced magpie; give us one song more before you go to roost. Laugh out, old jackass; till you fetch an echo back from the foggy hollow. Up on your bare boughs, it is dripping, dreary autumn: but down here in the vineyard, are bursting the first green buds of an immortal spring.