Alas, poor Catherine! How little room there is for the heroic in this trivial everyday life of ours! Catherine a bride, Catherine a wife and mother, dim visions of a white soft morsel in which Catherine's eyes and smile should live again--all these thoughts went trembling and flashing through Mrs.Leyburn's mind as she listened to Mrs.Thornburgh.There is so much of the artist in the maternal mind, of the artist who longs to see the work of his hand in fresh combinations and under all points of view.

Catherine, in the heat of her own self-surrender, had perhaps forgotten that her mother too had a heart! 'Yes, it all sounds very well' said Mrs.Leyburn at last, sighing, 'but, you know, Catherine isn't easy to manage.' 'Could you talk to her--find out a little ?' 'Well, not to-day; I shall hardly see her.

Doesn't it seem to you that when a girl takes up notions like Catherine's she hasn't time for thinking about the young men?
Why, she's as full of business all day long as an egg's full of meat.

Well, it was my poor Richard's doing--it was his doing, bless him! I am not going to say anything against it but it was different--once.' 'Yes, I know,' said Mrs.Thornburgh, thoughtfully.

'One had plenty of time, when you and I were young, to sit at home and think what one was going to wear, and how one would look, and whether he had been paying attention to any one else; and if he had, why; and all that.