I meander, like a desultory, placid river of an old bachelor as I am, through the flowery mead of several nurseries. I am detained by all the little roots that run down into me to drink happiness, but I linger longest among the children of my sister Lu.
Lu married Mr. Lovegrove. He is a merchant, retired, with a fortune amassed by the old-fashioned slow process of trade, and regards the mercantile life of the present day only as so much greed and gambling Christianly baptized. For the ten years elapsing since he sold out of Lovegrove, Cashdown & Co., he has devoted himself to his family and a revival of letters, taking up again the Latin and Greek which he had not looked at since his college days, until he dismissed teas and silks to adorn a suburban villa with a spectacle of a prime Christian parent and Pagan scholar. Lu is my favorite sister; Lovegrove an unusually good article of brother-in-law; and I can not say that any of my nieces and nephews interest me more than their two children, Daniel and Billy, who are more unlike than words can paint them. They are far apart in point of years; Daniel is twenty-two, Billy eleven. I was reminded of this fact the other day by Billy, as he stood between my legs, scowling at his book of sums.
“'A boy has 85 turnips and gives his sister 80'--pretty present for a girl, isn't it?” said Billy with an air of supreme contempt. “Could _you_ stand such stuff--say?”
I put on my instructive face and answered: “Well, my dear Billy, you know that arithmetic is necessary to you if you mean to be an industrious man and succeed in business. Suppose your parents were to lose all their property, what would become of them without a little son who could make money and keep accounts?”
“Oh!” said Billy with surprise. “Hasn't father got enough stamps to see him through?”
“He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they should go by some accident when your father was too old to make any more stamps for himself?”
“You haven't thought of brother Daniel--”
True; for nobody ever had, in connection with the active employments of life.
“No, Billy,” I replied; “I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is more of a student than a business man, and--”
