Stories and ballads for young folks

By ELLEN TRACY ALDEN.
(Copyright, 1879.)
NEW YORK: AMERICAN BOOK EXCHANGE, Tribune Building. 1880.

The north-west wind, driving feathery flakes of snow before it, heaps up gray masses of cloud over the sunny afternoon, and then, as if bent on subduing what cheeriness remains among the shadows it has brought, howls dismally down the chimneys, moans at the casements dismally. The Lieutenant throws himself down on the lounge, and draws a long sigh. Kate slips quietly out of the room, catches up her shawl and hat from the rack in the hall, and her brother, hearing her go down the steps into the street, wonders where she is bound for, and why she didn’t say something about it, and then falls back into his gloomy reverie.
“It may be ‘sweet for one’s country to die’; but to live on, a shattered, helpless wreck”—and, at the thought, he gripes the curving frame of the lounge with his one hand, and his firm-set lips quiver; when, suddenly, without the faintest footfall to indicate the approach of any one, two little arms creep about his neck, and between silvery peals of laughter a shower of kisses falls over forehead and sightless eyes, on either cheek, on nose, mouth and chin. “There!” cries a childish, laughing voice, “I surpized you, didn’t I? Ha, ha, ha!”
“Ha, ha!” echoes the Lieutenant, coming directly from a horizontal to a sitting posture, his arm around the wee mite, “so you did ‘surpize’ me, midget. And where did you come from? Did you drop out of the sky?”
“Out of the sky!” repeats the little maiden, with a great deal of scorn and emphasis. “Why, I comed right from our house! Katy comed after me, and we went round to the back door, so you wouldn’t hear, and then Katy took off my shoes, and I comed up on tiptoe in my stocking-feet. Ha, ha! I surpized you, didn’t I? I’m go’n to ’gin!” and away she rushes across the room and back against him, pell-mell, arms about his neck, and kisses raining all over his face. “There! how do you like it?” and the room rings with her musical laughter—in which the Lieutenant once more joins, with—