him up on the sofa where he really was my aunt to such a furious extent that he couldn t keep straight but himself sideways the more my aunt looked at him the more he reproached her for she had lately taken to spectacles and for some inscrutable reason he considered the glasses personal made him lie down by her with a good deal of persuasion and when he was quiet drew one of his long ears through and through her hand repeating thoughtfully even little oh poor fellow his lungs are good enough said my aunt gaily and his are not at all feeble he has a good many years before him no doubt the personal history and experience but if you want a dog to race with little blossom he has lived too well for that and i give you one thank you aunt said faintly but don t please no said my aunt taking off her spectacles i could nt have any other dog but said it would be so unkind to besides i couldn t be such friends with any other dog but because he wouldn t have known me before i was married and wouldn t have at when he first came to our house i couldn t care for any other dog but i am afraid aunt to be sure said my aunt patting her cheek again you are right you are not offended said are you why what a sensitive pet it is cried my aunt bending over her affectionately to think that i could be offended no no i didn t really think so returned but i am a little tired and it made me silly for a moment � i am always a silly little thing you know but it made me more silly � to talk about he has known me in all that has happened to me haven t you and i couldn t bear to slight him because he was a little altered � could i closer to his mistress and lazily licked her hand you are not so old are you that you ll leave your mistress yet said we may keep one another company a little longer my pretty when she came down to dinner on the sunday and was so glad to see old who always dined with us on sunday we thought she would be running about as she used to do in a few days but they said wait a few days more and then wait a few days more and still she neither ran nor walked she looked very pretty and was very merry but the little feet that used to be so when they danced round were dull and motionless i began to carry her down stairs every morning and upstairs every night she would clasp me round the neck and laugh the while as if i did it for a would bark and round us and go on before and look back on the landing breathing short to see that we were coming my aunt the best and most cheerful of nurses would after us a moving mass of and pillows mr dick would not have his post of candle bearer to any one alive would be often at the bottom of the staircase looking on and taking charge of messages from to the dearest girl in the world we made quite a gay procession of it and my child wife was the there but sometimes when i took her up and felt that she was lighter in my arms a dead blank feeling came upon me as if i were approaching to some frozen region yet unseen that my life i avoided the recognition of this feeling by any name or by any with myself until one night when it was very strong upon me and my aunt had left her with a parting cry of good night little blossom i sat down at my desk alone and cried to think what a fatal name it was and how the blossom withered in its bloom upon the tree of david chapter i am involved in i received one morning by the post the following letter dated and addressed to me at doctors which i read with some surprise my dear sir circumstances beyond my individual control have for a considerable lapse of time effected a of that intimacy which in the limited opportunities to me in the midst of my professional duties of contemplating the scenes and events of the past tinged by the hues of memory has ever afforded me as it ever must continue to afford gratifying emotions of no common description this fact my dear sir combined with the distinguished elevation to which your talents have raised you me from to to the liberty of addressing the companion of my youth by the familiar of it is sufficient to know that the name to which i do myself the honor to refer will ever be among the of our house i allude to the connected with our former preserved by mrs with sentiments of personal esteem to affection it is not for one situated through his original errors and a combination of events as is the bark if he may be allowed to assume so a who now takes up the pen to address you � it is not i repeat for one so to adopt the language of or of that he leaves to and to purer hands if your more important should admit of your ever tracing these imperfect characters thus far � which may be or may not be as circumstances arise � you will naturally inquire by what object am i influenced then in the present allow me to say that i fully to the reasonable character of that inquiry and proceed to it that it is not an object of a pecuniary nature without more directly referring to any latent ability 