The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

208 The Gates Ajar.
"Nothing, lately. It has been happening for
two years. Two miserable years are an eternity, at Clo's age. It is the old story, - a summer boarder; a little flirting; a little dreaming;
a little pain; then autumn, and the nuts
dropping on the leaves, and he was gone,and knew not what he did,-and the child
waked up. There was the future; to bake and
sweep, to go to sewing-circles, and sing in the
choir, and bear the moonlight nights,-and
she loved him. She has lived through two
years of it, and she loves him now. Reason
will not reach such a passion in a girl like Clo.
I did not tell her that she would put it away
with other girlish things, and laugh at it herself some happy day, as women have laughed
at their young fancies before her; partly
because that would be a certain way of repelling her confidence, - she does not believe it,
and my believing could not make her; partly
because I am not quite sure about it myself.
Clo has a good deal of the woman about her,
her introspective life is intense. She may
cherish this sweet misery as she does her
musical tastes, till it has struck deep root.
There is nothing in the excellent Mrs. Bentley's household, nor in Homer anywhere, to