And with such fancies drifting on your thought, you count for the
hundredth time the figures upon the curtains of your bed; you trace out
the flower-wreaths upon the paper-hangings of your room; your eyes rest
idly on the cat playing with the fringe of the curtain; you see your
mother sitting with her needle-work beside the fire; you watch the
sunbeams, as they drift along the carpet, from morning until noon; and
from noon till night you watch them playing on the leaves, and dropping
spangles on the lawn; and as you watch--you dream.
III.
_Boy Sentiment._
Weeks and even years of your boyhood roll on, in the which your dreams
are growing wider and grander,--even as the Spring, which I have made
the type of the boy-age, is stretching its foliage farther and farther,
and dropping longer and heavier shadows on the land.
Nelly, that sweet sister, has grown into your heart strangely; and you
think that all they write in their books about love cannot equal your
fondness for little Nelly. She is pretty, they say; but what do you care
for her prettiness? She is so good, so kind, so watchful of all your
wants, so willing to yield to your haughty claims!
But, alas! it is only when this sisterly love is lost forever,--only
when the inexorable world separates a family, and tosses it upon the
waves of fate to wide-lying distances, perhaps to graves,--that a man
feels, what a boy can never know,--the disinterested and abiding
affection of a sister.
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