"'But how did Miss Sparrow take it?'
"'That's what troubles me,' said my wretched friend. 'She didn't take it kindly: she seemed offended, and would have run away if I had not put my hand on the door-knob and begged her to hear me through. I assured her I would not press her for an immediate answer, but she only burst out crying declaring I had no right to say such things to her: she would tell her father. As if I should object to his being told! Indeed, I should have spoken to him myself on the subject this morning had not Dr. Pillsbury said he was too ill to see strangers. I tried to make this plain to Miss Sparrow. I implored her to tell me how I had vexed her, but she broke away from me and rushed out of the room. I cannot understand her conduct. I might have known such a bright young girl couldn't fancy an old fossil like me, but am I so bad a fellow, Hal, that she need feel insulted by my love? I would have walked barefooted over burning coals sooner than have wounded her as I have done.' And so on, and so on, till the cock crew.
"I ventured a second time to hint that he had merely been too precipitate in his wooing, but he shook his head incredulously, and finally went away as mystified as he came.
"At our next meeting the little soprano asked me in a shy, conscious way if my friend were quite well. Had I ever fancied his brain affected? I might have answered with a simple negative: I shall always think a little better of myself, Steve, that then and there, in the full bewitchment of Miss Sparrow's presence, I had manliness enough to speak a good word for Timothy—to tell her that, spite of some eccentricities, he had the finest brain, as well as the warmest heart, of any man of my acquaintance.
"I did not see her again for months, as she withdrew from the choir to devote herself exclusively to her father, whose sufferings were becoming daily more intense. These were not so much from actual pain, as from extreme nervousness that opiates failed to relieve. Dr. Pillsbury often spoke of the case—the doctor was boarding here then—and one day he appealed to Timothy to go with him and try his magnetic power upon the patient. A queer look came over Timothy's face, but he went at once, and was able to soothe the sick man simply by the laying on of hands. After this, while Mr. Sparrow lived, he went often, and comforted him greatly in his last hours, not only by his mesmeric influence, but indirectly as well by keeping those boys out of the way. The money he spent at that time in taking the lads to panoramas and menageries would have constituted him life member of a missionary society.
"You can see the natural result. Having proved a blessed narcotic to the dying father, Timothy ceased to be an irritant to the daughter. An irritant? Timothy couldn't irritate her, and she couldn't irritate Timothy. I've studied them curiously the three years of their married life, only to arrive at this conviction. And you took them for bride and groom? No wonder! since they still feast with unabated relish on connubial sweets. Ah, well! such diet is not for me, my boy: I thrive upon sour grapes."
Penn Shirley.