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The Chimes

fire; dressing her simple gown with ribbons for her wedding. So quietly happy, so blooming and youthful, so full of beauti­ful promise, that he uttered a great cry as if it were an Angel in his house; then flew to clasp her in his arms.

But he caught his feet in the newspaper, which had fallen on the hearth; and somebody came rushing in between them.

“No!” cried the voice of this same somebody; a generous and jolly voice it was! “Not even you. Not even you. The first kiss of Meg in the New Year is mine. Mine! I have been waiting outside the house, this hour, to hear the Bells and claim it. Meg, my precious prize, a happy year! A life of happy years, my darling wife!”

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