"The day cometh, and also the night,"—broke in the clear voice that was reading a selection from the Scriptures.
Tom started, and Willie took from his button-hole just such a little nosegay as that he had bought on Broadway a fortnight before,—a geranium leaf, a bit of mignonette, and a delicate tea-rosebud, and, seeing it was drooping, laid it carefully upon the programme on his knee. "I don't want that to fade," he thought as he put it down, while he looked across the platform at the same face which he had so eagerly pursued through a labyrinth of carriages, stages, and people, and lost at last.
"There! Clara is talking to your beauty. I wonder if she is to sing, or do anything. If she does, it will be something dainty and fine, I'll wager. Helloa! there's Clara up,—now for it."
Clara's bright little voice suited her bright little face,—like her brother's, only a great deal prettier,—and the young men enjoyed both, aside from brotherly and cousinly feeling, cheered her "to the echo" as Willie said, threw their bouquets,—great, gorgeous things they had brought from the city to please her,—and wished there was more of it all when it was through.
"What next?" said Willie.
"Heaven preserve us! your favorite subject. Who would expect to tumble on such a theme here?—'Slavery; by Francesca Ercildoune.' Odd name,—and, by Jove! it's the beauty herself."
They both leaned forward eagerly as she came from her seat; slender, shapely, every fibre fine and exquisite, no coarse graining from the dainty head to the dainty foot; the face, clear olive, delicate and beautiful,—
"The mouth with steady sweetness set,
And eyes conveying unaware
The distant hint of some regret
That harbored there,"—
eyes deep, tender, and pathetic.
"What's this?" said Tom. "Queer. It gives me a heartache to look at her."