Seventeen! sweet, gay, laughing seventeen had come to Fanny—and she had never once thought of getting married. Not she. She would have been obliged to contemplate marriage as something that must separate her from the only home she had ever known; and she would as soon have stepped out of her skin some cold night, as have gone away from her dear friends. She liked everybody and loved nobody, and wanted to hug the whole world, as she forcibly said, because she was so happy.

“Christmas Eve, to-morrow, Cousin Charles; I hope all my presents are purchased and directed.”

“And what are you going to give me, little Miss Fairy?”

“Myself, to be sure,” laughed Fanny. “What else have I to give away?”

“No, that you wont. You will keep yourself for some worthless fellow, I’ll warrant.”

“No, I thank you. I had rather be excused. I intend to make your black tea as long as you live, if you don’t conclude to leave the tea out, and take water with me.”

“I tell you, you will marry a scamp the day after you are eighteen—that is the way with all the women.”

“There must be a prodigious number of scamps, then, cousin; and if you had only been one of them, you might have been happily married, instead of being the nicest bear of a bachelor at large.”

“I think I might get married even now, if I were only fool enough.”

“But as you are very wise, you shall be my Cousin Charles, and nothing else—and I would not exchange you for a pet porcupine. Don’t you see how I prize you? So don’t think of getting married—I should quarrel with your wife, to see which should love you best; and that would be very inconvenient for us all.”

Christmas was a merry time at Charles Evans’s. The man of deeds and documents always relaxed and came out of the world of business, or, as he said, “allowed the world to mind its own business” at Christmas and New Year. But something very serious happened to Mr. Evans from this year’s Christmas merry-making. A pretty girl needed some one to see her home, and glowing and perspiring from the last game at “Blind Man’s Buff,” Mr. Evans attended her on a bitter night, which made him run home as rapidly as possible, with chattering teeth, and a chill that seemed to go quite to his heart. Next morning he awoke with a quaking headache and pains through all his bones, and great heat and cold chills, and all the concomitants of a bad fever about him. Thanks to the exhaustion of unremitting and most unreasonable labor, such as a great many men perform who do the head-work for the headless multitude, and thanks also to the lancet of a certain doctor, who held to letting the bad blood out of a man, and poisoning what remained to purify it, Mr. Evans became dangerously sick. What an invaluable treasure was Fanny now. Her foot was the lightest—her hand was the softest and coolest—her eyes never closed in slumber, unless she left the best of watchers in her place—and she threw quantities of physic to the dogs, or some equally prudent place, and she nourished the patient carefully when he began to get well; and at last, in spite of all the evils in the patient, and out of him, doctors and drugs included, she saw Mr. Evans convalescent.

At length he came down stairs, and when he thought how long Fanny had left her piano locked, and not even listened to her canary, he asked her for a song. It was in very kindness to her, and in accordance with his benevolent character—for he thought that he disliked music, and it is probable that he had the good taste to dislike the heathen discord that had been christened music, where he had happened to be the victim.

The Battle of Prague, thumped with indenting emphasis on a piano sadly out of tune, had given Mr. Evans his ideas of melody; and it is small wonder that he had as great dislike for music as prudent regard for his ears.

It was a great surprise to Mr. Evans when Fanny’s melodious voice fell on his ear, appropriately accompanied by the instrument, which was one of the softest and sweetest in the world. He had expected the Battle of Prague, and it seemed to him, so great was the contrast, like humming-birds amid the flowers.

Fanny sung a song of her own composing, descriptive of her own life, first in its great sadness and trials and deep grief with her sainted mother, and then her bereavement, and then her adoption by her cousin, and the calm flow of her life since then. At the close of her song she alluded to her best friend’s illness, and spoke of her joy that he was now safely recovering. The song and the music were her own, and they came from the depth of her heart. The sad, sweet murmur of her soul’s sorrow in the first verses, was succeeded by the calm happiness and bird-like joy of the years passed in her cousin’s home, and again the sorrowful notes spoke of his illness, and the winged joy burst forth in the happy conclusion.

It was a triumph to Fanny when she saw at the close of the piece tears rolling over Mr. Evans’s face, and he said, with a voice rendered indistinct by emotion, “Sing it again, Fanny”—and she was only too happy to comply with his request.

When the song was ended, he conquered his emotion, and laughing through his tears, he said,

“You shall be my nightingale, Fanny.”

“Thank you, I accept the appointment—what salary do you intend to give?” said Fanny, as she sat down on the sofa by the invalid, and passed her hand over his high, white forehead, to see if any fever were warning her to send her patient away to rest.

“I will give you myself and all that I have,” said he, again bursting into tears.

A flood of new thoughts rushed through the mind of Fanny. She paused to think what to say. “You are weak, cousin, and must not sit up too long. Will you go to your room, or will you rest and sleep on the sofa here?”

Mr. Evans was frightened at what he had said. He was sure Fanny could never love him only as a father or elder brother; and now he thought he had broken the freedom of that relation, and he blamed himself, and troubled himself, and well-nigh fretted himself into a relapse of his fever. But his naturally strong constitution triumphed, and in a few weeks he was perfectly restored.

Meanwhile Fanny had become grave and thoughtful; and, truth to tell, she shunned her cousin more than she ought. She had not known how dear he was to her till his illness—during the time that he was considered dangerous she had neither eaten nor slept. She had watched over him as a mother watches her first born. She felt that if he should die, life, which had always seemed so full of joy and blessing, would be a blank to her. She had not asked herself if this were love. She had supposed it was only the interest she ought to feel in her cousin. Now she was put upon examining her own heart. She fully believed that her cousin was by no means in love with her, but that his tender confession was owing to the weakness induced by his severe illness and his gratitude to his fortunately successful nurse.

——