"You will find him improved, perhaps."
"Enlarged," retorted Catherine, "and with a more capacious appetite—if that be possible; that will be the only change. They say there are limits to all things—I shall never believe it now."
And then the few who were now in the hotel came in, and dinner began; and Catherine's presence filled the room, cap streamers seemed floating about in all directions; and her voice was every now and then heard proclaiming Lâ Suite.
And later on, in the darkness, we went out according to our custom, and revelled in the old-world streets, the latticed windows, still lighted up, waiting for the curfew—real or figurative, public or domestic. For we all have our curfews, only they are not proclaimed from some ancient tower; and, alas, they are, like Easter, a movable institution; whereby it comes to pass that we too often waste the midnight oil and burn the candle at both ends, and before our time fall into the "sere and yellow leaf."
ACROSS THE RIVER.
Here we sat beside the river
Long ago, my Love and I,
Where the willows droop and quiver
'Twixt the water and the sky.
We were wrapped in fragrant shadow,
'Twas the quiet vesper time,
And the bells across the meadows
Mingled with the ripple's chime.
With no thought of ill betiding,
"Thus," we said, "life's years shall be
For us twain a river gliding
To a calm, eternal sea."
I am sitting by the river
Where we used to sit of old,
And the willows droop and quiver
'Gainst a sky of burning gold;
But my Love long since went onward,
Down the river's shining tide,
To the land that is far sunward,
With the angels to abide;
And in pastures fair and vernal,
In the coming by-and-bye,
Far across the sea eternal
We shall meet—my Love and I.
Helen M. Burnside.