horrid yells," she said reflectively. "Ugh!" and she shrugged her slender shoulders in a little shiver of repulsion at the idea. This was certainly more conciliatory, but the captain was only kept upon the subject on compulsion, wondering at her interest in it, and turned off from it with

"Do not let us talk of that now! Let me tell you how beautiful I think you, how dear you are to me! We can discuss it at least, can we not? that can do no harm?"

"Yes, it can," she maintained obstinately.

"Both your father and mother are on my side," he ventured, exploding a bombshell.

"Oh, dreadful!" she exclaimed, starting up with an expression as if surrounded, desperately hemmed in front, flank, and rear, with small hope of retreat possible, "have you spoken to them? But they know nothing about such thingsnothing."

The lover was in despair. He feared that he had committed a hopeless imprudence, and began to apologize : "I mean to say—that is

"No! I say, you must not talk to me so."

This now, as it happened, was the exact moment of the marine explosion below, which had consequences above, far beyond anything its authors could have dreamed of. Fully a square yard of good plastering was shaken from the ceiling of the veranda by it, and fell to the floor with a crash. It must have been already, for some time, in a defective condition, to be thus easily displaced. However this may be, it fell precisely upon our lovers with a thump and a dull roar, staggering them and enveloping them in a dense cloud of white dust.

Captain Bradford was the first to recover, and saw Sophy leaning against the wall, deadly pale, and heard her murmur weakly, "My head! my head!" Her beautiful hair was disheveled, her entire costume in disarray, and one hand raised to her brow in a dazed way. He flew to her, frantically brushed away a part of the débris, and, taking her boldly in his arms, supported her within.

"Oh, what has happened to you, my darling, my pet, my pretty one? Oh, I hope you are not hurt," he cried, as he labored over her, most tenderly bathing her face and hands with cool water.

"I feared we were both killed," she said, soon smiling at him faintly. "A weight of tons seemed to fall upon my

head, but my braids saved me. I am not hurt, only a little stunned."

He was holding both her hands in his, now, without resistance. Perhaps she was not conscious of it.

"Oh, if I should lose you," he went on, "what would become of me?"

She was dazed, as has been said, and this was very pleasant to listen to.

"I fear I do not understand women. It is said-it is a kind of proverb that they say 'no' when they mean 'yes."" The military man let fall this abstruse intelligence with a simple engaging frankness. "They do not wish to appear too easily won. But you are not like that, I know. You would not wring my heart for an absurd scruple, a petty conventional whim."

She opened a shrewd corner of an eye at him upon this, but closed it again before he discovered it. Where had he learned such a profundity of wisdom, indeed?

"I can never think of you as easily won. I can never half tell you how I adore you, how unworthy I feel myself of you, were I to take a whole lifetime," he persisted, borne on in the fervid torrent of his wooing.

"Who has given you such ridiculous ideas about women?" she asked him, raising slowly at length the lids, fringed with their charming long lashes which had veiled so long both lustrous eyes, now arch with laughter.

She closed them again softly the next moment, and added, before he could speak :

"I am so glad this has happened. I have liked you all the time."

LITTLE BOY BLUE.

BY EUGENE FIELD.

[1850-1895.]

THE little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new
And the soldier was passing fair,

And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.

"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
"And don't you make any noise!"
So toddling off to his trundle-bed

He dreamt of the pretty toys.

And as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue,

Oh, the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true.

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place,

Awaiting the touch of a little hand,

The smile of a little face.

And they wonder, as waiting these long years through, In the dust of that little chair,

What has become of our Little Boy Blue

Since he kissed them and put them there.

DUTCH LULLABY.

BY EUGENE FIELD.

WYNKEN, Blynken, and Nod one night

Sailed off in a wooden shoe,

Sailed on a river of misty light

Into a sea of dew.

"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"

The old moon asked the three.

"We have come to fish for the herring fish

That live in this beautiful sea;

Nets of silver and gold have we,"

Said Wynken,
Blynken,

And Nod.

The old moon laughed and sung a song,

As they rocked in the wooden shoe;
And the wind that sped them all night long

Ruffled the waves of dew;

The little stars were the herring fish

That lived in the beautiful sea.