Mr. Bond was coming home! the glad news was in Nannie's hand, and he was even then bounding over the waters toward his lowly friends.

The room looked very sunny that morning, and the hearts of the expectant ones danced for joy. He would be there the next week, and they must all be there to meet him on Friday—that seemed so like a reality, to name the very day. Pat could request a holiday of his employers, and, as for Mrs. Minturn, she was sure to participate in all of Nannie's pleasures, and would be ready with the permission to spend the important day at her mother's. The greatest trouble was the intervening hours; how could they be comfortably disposed of! they had duties enough to perform, and yet the time went slowly and wearily; but it had an end, and a happy one—for the kind face was before them, as fat and merry and amiable as ever, and the immense corporosity moved about the room with as much gravity as so jolly a person was capable of. Nobody would have suspected that he had ever been ill, or that the shadow of a sorrow had ever troubled him. Seated beside the window with the June air playing blandly upon his forehead, he congratulated himself that he was once more among his friends. What if they were humble and poor! there was a depth and richness in their love for him that neither comes of station nor wealth, and it sunk soothingly and gratefully into his glad heart, making it fruitful in a pure joy.

"It is not quite so pleasant bouncing up and down at the will of the angry waves, Nannie," said he, "as to sit quietly in this lolling-chair with your friends all about you, I can tell you, my girl!" and he looked at Nannie with a twinkle and a laugh, as if to say, "I'm well out of it, though. The ocean doesn't have any mercy on a body's bones, but tosses you about as if you were an India-rubber ball made on purpose;" added he, bursting into a hearty roar as he caught Mrs. Bates' eye fastened upon his rotund proportions, as if to ascertain where the bones were. "Oh! well, my good woman," continued he, "even a porpoise couldn't stand the bumping and thumping that we poor mortals are subject to when we trust ourselves on shipboard. Why, I solemnly protest that I've been pitched from my berth, many a time, quite across the cabin into my neighbor's and back again, in a trice, and that without ceremony, too!"

The old gentleman did not seem very indignant, but smiled upon his auditors as placidly as if there had been nothing but calm on his homeward journey, and he did not even mind their merriment as they pictured to themselves his robust figure bounding about like a foot-ball.

You are in the right of it, Mr. Bond. If you are the object of an innocent glee, it is better to join in the merry laugh, rather than to don a severe and offended dignity. It is quite a funny thought, though, that, amid such pitiless peltings you should escape with not even the slightest impression upon your fleshless bones! well, there's some comfort in being fat, you have that to console you. He doesn't look as if he ever needed to be consoled, but I can tell you that even Mr. Bond is not wholly exempt from the annoyances and trials of life! He has learned how to make the best of every thing, and that is more than half toward averting a trouble. Put a cheerful face upon the matter, it will but make it worse to fret and frown and keep your neighbors uncomfortable about it, besides working yourself into a teapot! Mr. Bond crowded all the evils down into the deepest corner of his heart and turned the key upon them, and that was the end of them. Nobody ever got hold of and magnified them, until he felt that they were too painful for any mortal to bear, for he kept them so close that they had not room to breathe, and so suffocated, and he knew nothing more about them.

It was a way of Mr. Bond's—there, couldn't every body do it—there's a certain process to go through before one can learn, and he had tried it thoroughly, and was really a proficient in the thing. It isn't every body that cares to learn—it is very pleasant to draw a friend into a corner and pour into a willing and sympathizing ear all that affects one depressingly, but it is a question whether either is benefited by the confidence—the gloom may not only be deepened upon your own face, but it may reflect itself upon the countenance before you also. Better imitate the amiable and wise bachelor, and impart nothing but that which will bring a bright gleam with it.