grows apace. "Come out," says Billy one morning early in April, thrusting a disheveled head into my room; "come out: it is almost warm." Whereupon I don my hat and sally forth, my Billy in attendance. Mechanically we make for the small belt of trees that encircles and bounds our home, and is by courtesy "our wood." It is my favorite retreat--the spot most dear to me at Summerleas. Ah! how sweet is everything today, how fragrant! The primrose gold in its mossy bed, supported by its myriad friends; the pretty purple violet--the white one prettier still. I sigh and look about me sadly.

"This is the very last spring I shall ever spend at home," I say, at length, being in one of my sentimental and regretful moods. "Yes," returns Billy; "this time next year, I suppose, you will be holding high court at Strangemore. How funny you will look? you are so small! Why, you will be an out-and-out swell then, Phyllis, and can cut the country if you choose. What are you so doleful about? Ain't you glad?""No, I am not," I reply emphatically; "I am sorry! I am _wretched!_ Everything will be so new and big and strange, and--_you_ will not be there. Oh, Billy!" flinging my arms around his neck, "I feel _that_ worst of all. I am _too_ fond of you, and that's a fact."

"Well, and I am awfully fond of you too," says Billy, giving me a bear-like hug that horribly disarranges my appearance, but is sweet to me, so much do I adore my "boy Billee."

We seat ourselves on a grassy knoll and give ourselves up to gloomy foreboding.

"It is a beastly nuisance, your getting married at all," says Billy, grumpily. "If it had been Dora, now, it would have been a cause for public rejoicing; but you are different. What I am to do without you in this stupid hole is more than I can tell. I shall get papa to send me to a boarding-school when you go." (The Eton plan has not yet been divulged.) "Why on earth did you take a fancy to that fellow, Phyllis? Were you not very well as you were?"

"It was _he_ took a fancy to _me_, if you please. I never thought of such a thing. But there is little use discussing that now. Marry him I must before the year is out; and really, perhaps, after all, I shall be very happy."

"Oh, yes, I dare say, if being happy means settling down and having a lot of squalling brats before you can say Jack Robinson. _I_ know how it will be," says Billy, moodily "you will be an old woman before your time."

"Indeed I shall not," I cry, with much 

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