In the spare moments, that before he would have more than wasted, he wrote out with tender reverence the life-story Mrs. Burnham had told him. His heart was in his work, and the result was a touching and really well-written little tale. A great New York editor thought it was so good, in fact, that he promptly mailed Ted a check for $25 and promised his effort immediate publication. When it did appear the author read it to the principal characters, who listened with tear-wet eyes, and immediately decided that Ted was without doubt the American Dickens. Its further effect was apparent a few days later, when a gruff but kindly letter was received from Uncle John. One of its paragraphs was as follows: “I was much pleased with your story in the _Cosmopolitan_. The heroine is, I suspect, a flesh and blood girl of your acquaintance. If she will marry you, I will settle $2,000 a year on her and change my will again.” Ted repeated the words to Eva just as they reached her door, after the walk home from the theatre one night. “Can we live on $2,000 a year?” he asked with a smile, but gravely. The girl grew pale and trembled; but when she looked up shyly and sweetly into his ardent eyes there was no need for words. With a happy sigh she threw her arms around his neck, and their lips met for the first time. [Illustration: Decoration] No one was ever so near heaven before as the happy pair which New Year’s found in dingy, stuffy old Suite Four. OUR WINTER BIRDS. OUR WINTER BIRDS. ROBERT A. CAMPBELL. [Illustrations by H. M. Chase and H. H. Gibson.] “Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year.” It is not remarkable that poets and bird-lovers consider the spring of the year preëminently the season in which birds are to be studied and admired. The change from the winter to the spring, from the sombre to the variegated, the harmony that wakes the silent woods, the dreamy south wind that mellows the air,—in truth, all life, awakening, seems to be striving to render nature beautiful and attractive. To say that spring-tide is not the best season of the year for studying birds would be indicative of ignorance; but to say that spring is the only season in which birds may be profitably studied, would show an equal lack of knowledge. [Illustration: Hanover sign]