"Do you know when?"

No reply.

"She sings the next piece. Are you ready to listen?"

"Ready."

"Good Lord!" cried Tom, in despair, "the fellow has lost his wits. He has turned parrot; he has done nothing but repeat my words for me since he sat here. He's an echo."

"Echo of nothingness?" queried the parrot, smilingly.

"Ah, you've come to yourself, have you? Capital! now stay awake. There's Clara to sing directly, and you are to cheer her, and look as if you enjoyed it, and throw her that bouquet when I tell you, and let her think it's a fine thing she has been doing; for this is a tremendous affair to her, poor child, of course."

"How bright and happy she is! You will laugh at me, Tom, and indeed I don't know what has come over me, but somehow I feel quite sad, looking at those girls, and wondering what fate and time have in store for them."

"Sunshine and bright hours."

"The day cometh, and also the night,"—broke in the clear voice that was reading a selection from the Scriptures.

Tom started, and Willie took from his button-hole just such a little nosegay as that he had bought on Broadway a fortnight before,—a geranium leaf, a bit of mignonette, and a delicate tea-rosebud, and, seeing it was drooping, laid it carefully upon the programme on his knee. "I don't want that to fade," he thought as he put it down, while he looked across the platform at the same face which he had so eagerly pursued through a labyrinth of carriages, stages, and people, and lost at last.

"There! Clara is talking to your beauty. I wonder if she is to sing, or do anything. If she does, it will be something dainty and fine, I'll wager. Helloa! there's Clara up,—now for it."

Clara's bright little voice suited her bright little face,—like her brother's, only a great deal prettier,—and the young men enjoyed both, aside from brotherly and cousinly feeling, cheered her "to the echo" as Willie said, threw their bouquets,—great, gorgeous things they had brought from the city to please her,—and wished there was more of it all when it was through.

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