"No! no! I'm sure I don't look as if anything were wrong. It's this letter from Mr. Clendon."
"Mr. Clendon?" repeated Mrs. Belswin, taking the letter handed to her by Kaituna. "Is that the charming young fellow we met the other day?"
"Oh, I see he has a friend staying with him, and they are going to call this afternoon. Kaituna, I am a sorceress--a witch, my dear, I should have been burnt in the middle ages as a practitioner of the black art. Give me your hand."
"What for," asked Kaituna in some confusion, as Mrs. Belswin took her by the wrist.
"For a magical ceremony! There! Now tell me. Is Mr. Clendon the prince?"
"That's very emphatic. I mistrust emphasis in a girl. Well, we will dismiss Mr. Clendon, though he is very delightful. What about Mr. Maxwell? Ah! Now I know! Your pulse leaped at the name. Your face is rosy, your eyes are bright. By the white witchcraft I practise I interpret these signs. You are in love, my dear."
Kaituna snatched away her hands with a little laugh and covered her burning face.
"You the sleeping beauty," said Mrs. Belswin, with mock severity. "My dear, your sleep is over. The true prince has arrived and the hundred years are at an end."
The girl made no reply, but between her fingers one bright eye looked forth at her chaperon.
"I will talk to Mr. Maxwell this afternoon, and see if he is a man worthy of you."
"Ah! you have betrayed yourself. It is the prince after all. But what about your father?"
"Of course not, provided your prince is rich."
"Rich or poor; it doesn't matter. Papa will deny me nothing. He is the kindest man in the world."
"Humph!" muttered Mrs. Belswin under her breath. "He has altered since my time, then."
"In a garden fair you met me, And I told you all my woes. Then, in case you might forget me, I bestowed on you a rose.
"Love had captive to you brought me, For I felt his arrow's smart; So in mercy quick you sought me, And bestowed on me a heart."
Oh, wonderful! wonderful! and thrice wonderful was the soul of Vicar Clendon seeing that in this mummified body, battered by the assaults of sixty years, it still kept itself fresh and green in the very heyday of perennial youth. In spite of his grubbing among dusty books; in spite of the hardening process of continually celebrating marriages; in spite of the pessimistic ideas which come with old age, he could still feel sympathetic thrills when he heard the sighings of two lone lovers. He should have frowned and looked askance on such youthful foolery; he should have forgotten the days when Plancus was consul, and he wooed Amaryllis with bashful courtesy; he should have preached sermons a mile long on the sin of going to the temple of Venus, but, strange to tell, he did not. This withered old husk encased a fresh young soul, and the venerable clergyman felt a boyish pleasure in the courting of these young men. Is the age of miracles past, when such things can happen--when sober age can sympathize with frolic youth without pointing out the follies of the world, as seen telescopically from a distance of sixty years? No! oh, no! in spite of cynicism, and pessimism, and various other isms, all belonging to the same detestable class, there are still those among us whose souls bloom freshly, though cased in antique frames.
