Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/304

 king at our wondering, half-puzzled faces. "Let it go, Alice; Life is a problem too hard for you to solve as yet; perhaps it will solve itself. Meantime, we will brighten ourselves up to-morrow by a good scamper over the hills, and, the next day, if your fancy for study still holds, we will plan out some hard work, and I will show you what real study is. Now go to bed; but see first that Aunt Molly has her sandwiches and gingerbread ready for the morning."

TALK NUMBER TWO.

Uncle John was well qualified to show us what real study was, for in his early youth he had read hard and long to fit himself for a literary life. What had changed his course and driven him to the far West we did not know, but since his return he had brought the perseverance and judgment of middle life to the studies of his youth, and in his last ten years of leisure had made himself that rarest of things among Americans, a scholar, one worthy of the name.

Under his guidance our studies took life, and Alice threw herself into them with all the energy of her nature. In vain papa pished and pshawed, and mamma grieved, and begged John not to spoil the girls by making bookworms of them; in vain "Laura C. and the rest of them" entreated us to join this picnic or show ourselves at that party; in vain the young men professed themselves afraid of us, and the girls tossed their heads and called us blue-stockings. Alice's answer to all was, "I like studying; it is a great deal more entertaining than going to parties; Uncle John's study is pleasanter than Mrs. C.'s parlor, and a ride on his little Winnebago better fun than dancing." And so the years went on. We were not out of society,--that could not be in our house,--but our associates changed; young men of a higher standing frequented the house; we knew intimately the cultivated women, to whom, before, we had simply bowed at parties; and mamma and papa grew quite satisfied.

Not so Alice; the spirit of unrest was on her again, but this time it was not because of the weariness of life, but that she was oppressed by the fulness of her own happiness. She had waked up to life in waking up to love, and had poured out on Herbert B. the whole wealth of her heart. There was everything in her engagement to satisfy her friends, everything to gratify papa and mamma; and if I sometimes thought Herbert's too feeble a nature to guide hers, or if Uncle John sometimes talked with or listened to him as if he were measuring his depth and then went away with an anxious expression of face, who shall say how much of selfishness influenced us both? for was he not to take from us the pet and pride of our lives?

They were to be married in a few weeks, on Alice's twentieth birthday, and then leave for New York, where Herbert was connected in business with his father.

It was on a gloomy December afternoon that Alice came running up to our room, where I was reading my Italian lesson, and exclaimed,--

"Quick, Kate! put away those stupid books, and let us go over to Uncle John's for the night."

"Where is Herbert?"

"Herbert? Nonsense! I have sent him off with orders not to look for me again till to-morrow, and to-night I mean to pretend that there is no Herbert in the world. Perhaps this will be my last talk with Uncle John."

We walked quickly through the streets, shrouded in the dark winter-afternoon atmosphere heavy with coal-smoke, the houses on each side dripping with the fog-drops and looking dirty and cheerless with the black streaks running from the corners of each window, like tears down the face of some chimney-sweep or coal-boy, till, reaching the foot of Ludlow Street, we stood ankle-deep in mud, waiting for the little steamer, which still ploughed its way through the dark, sullen-looking water thick with the red mud which the late rise had brough