We were too sensible to believe in fairies, and who the mischief was emptying the "horn of plenty" in that way at our feet, was the question.
When we woke the next morning, we found in the back yard, a barrel of apples, a barrel of flour, a keg of butter, and a bag of buckwheat flour; labelled, "For Mr. John Harris, —— street."
John declared, (after pinching himself to see if he were really John,) that he fastened the gate inside the very last thing before he put on his night-cap. Mrs. Harris said somebody must have climbed over and unfastened it; and I jumped right up and down, for a bright thought had just struck me, and I was determined to hold on to it, for I didn't have a bright thought every day.
"What now?" said John, as I capered round the room.
"Oh! nothing," said I, "only it takes a woman, after all, to find out a secret—and to keep it, too," I added, snapping my fingers at him.
That day I thought it would do me good to ride about in an omnibus. I tried several. It didn't make much difference to me whether they went up street or down, or where they finally stopped. I was looking more at the passengers.
By and by I saw the person I wanted. Said I, in a whisper, sitting down beside him, "House rent—clerkship—flour—butter—crackers and buckwheat; all for giving you a seat in an omnibus!"
Didn't I know that "the fairy" was the nice old man with silver locks? Didn't he bribe me to hold my tongue, by telling me that he would come and drink tea with me, so that he might get a peep at John and his mother? Didn't he come? and didn't I look as much astonished when he called, as if it hadn't been all settled two days previous? But how was I to know that Mrs. Harris would turn out to be an old love of his? How was John to know, when he felt such an irresistible impulse to be kind to the old man, that his hair had grown white loving his mother? How was the old man to know why he loved John so well, and thought him one of the finest young men he had ever seen? How was I to know that I was to turn out to be what I always so mortally hated—a feminine match-maker?