"How delightful!" I say, clapping my hands, "but why not before midsummer?"
"We are going on our usual wild goose expedition round the continent," he says disgustedly, "and a lively time I shall have of it."
"It will be such fun," I say, following my own train of thought, "when I am grown up and come home for good, you and Jack and I will be such friends!"
"Nell," says the young man, leaning over towards me, "do you think you will ever care for me as much as Jack?"
"It is not likely," I say, smiling into his bright, eager, beautiful young face, "you are not my brother, you know!"
"And I am very glad of it," he says decidedly.
"Glad?" I say, opening my eyes, "and you said just now you should like a sister just like me!"
"Just like you, perhaps, but not you. Nell, do you think you will ever be married?"
"Oh! I suppose so," I answer indifferently; "everybody is sooner or later. It is wretched to be an old maid, with no one to stand up for you, is it not?"
"Very! Have you any notion of what your husband ought to be like, Nell?"
"My husband!" I repeat, breaking into a peal of laughter. "How droll it sounds; it is like playing at a feast; and yet mother knew a lady who was married at sixteen, her mother at fifteen, and her grandmother at fourteen!"
"Then it is high time you were married! But you have not told me what he must be like?"
"Dark," I say, pursing up my mouth, and looking at the sun who is passing away to his rest in such gorgeous pomp with his bright children, the clouds, thronging about him. "Very dark;
