I knew, too, his thrill when she came straight down the aisle, took up the flowers with a glance of sweet reproof for him, and nested them in the largest vase on her desk.

But my poor affair had been in an earlier day, and my namesake wove novelty into the woof of his.

For in that wonder-book of the fertile-minded Gaskell was a form of letter which Calvin Blake Denney began to copy early in December, and which by the following spring he could write in a style that already put my own poor penning to the blush.

Did he write it a hundred times or five hundred, moved anew each time by its sweet potencies, its rarest of suggestions?
I know not, but it must have been very many times, for I would find the copies in his school books, growing in beauty of flourish day by day.

As well as if he had confessed it I knew that this letter was intended for the father of his love--for old Sam Murdock, to be literal, who uncouthly performed for us the offices of drayman; but who, in my namesake's eyes, shone pure and splendid for his relationship.