But Kit's mother, again--wouldn't anybody have sup-
posed she had come of a good stock and been a lady all
her life? There she was, quite ready to receive them, with
a display of tea-things that might have warmed the heart
of a china-shop; and little Jacob and the baby in such a
state of perfection that their clothes looked as good as
new, though Heaven knows they were old enough! Didn't
she say before they had sat down five minutes that Bar-
bara's mother was exactly the sort of lady she expected,
and didn't Barbara's mother say that Kit's mother was
the very picture of what she had expected, and didn't Kit's
mother compliment Barbara's mother on Barbara, and
didn't Barbara's mother compliment Kit's mother on Kit,
and wasn't Barbara herself quite fascinated with little
Jacob, and did ever a child show off when he was wanted,
as that child did, or make such friends as he made?

"And we are both widows too!" said Barbara's mother.
"We must have been made to know each other."

"I haven't a doubt about it," returned Mrs. Nubbles.
"And what a pity it is we didn't know each other sooner."

"But then you know it's such a pleasure," said Bar-
bara's mother, "to have it brought about by one's son
and daughter, that it's fully made up for, now, an't it?"

To this, Kit's mother yielded her full assent, and tracing
things back from effects to causes, they naturally reverted
to their deceased husbands, respecting whose lives, deaths,
and burials, they compared notes, and discovered sundry
circumstances that tallied with wonderful exactness; such
as Barbara's father having been exactly four years and
ten months older than Kit's father, and one of them having
died on a Wednesday and the other on a Thursday, and
both of them having been of a very fine make and remark-
ably good-looking, with other extraordinary coincidences.
These recollections being of a kind calculated to cast a
shadow on the brightness of the holiday, Kit diverted the
conversation to general topics, and they were soon in great
force again, and as merry as before. Among other things,
Kit told them about his old place, and the extraordinary
beauty of Nell (of whom he had talked to Barbara a thou-
sand times already); but the last-named circumstance failed
to interest his hearers to anything like the extent he had
supposed, and even his mother said (looking accidentally
at Barbara at the same time) that there was no doubt Miss
Nell was very pretty, but she was but a child after all, and

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