Bessie Bradfords Prize | Page 6

in his kind eyes, "you know I would keep quiet if you told me to."
"You would try, I am sure, Midget," answered her friend, "but there are girls and girls, you know, and it is easier for one species to keep quiet under exciting causes than it is for another."
"But you can't tell how this species would be in such circumstances," said Maggie, "because I have never been very ill or had any terrible injury, such as Lena's burns."
"I can tell that you are a very 'happy circumstance' yourself, and that I am quite satisfied with you as you are," answered the Colonel, bending another loving look upon the rosy, glowing face upturned to his, and which broke into dimples at the allusion to an old-time joke.
Long ago, when Maggie was a very little girl, she had been very fond of using long words--indeed, she had not yet outgrown this fancy; but in former days, whenever she heard what she called "a new word," she would presently contrive some occasion for using it, not always with the fullest understanding of its exact meaning; and the results, as may be supposed, were sometimes rather droll.
One summer, when Mr. Bradford's family were at the sea-shore, and Colonel and Mrs. Rush were their near neighbors, Maggie had taken a violent dislike to the mistress of the house where she boarded. The woman was somewhat rough and unprepossessing, it is true, and hence Maggie had conceived the prejudice against her; but she was kind-hearted and good, as the little girl learned later. Having heard some one use the expression, "happy circumstance," Maggie took a fancy to it; and, as she informed Bessie, immediately resolved to adopt it as one of "my words."
An opportunity soon presented itself. Mrs. Jones offended both children, Maggie especially, and soon after, she asked Mr. Jones in confidence, if he thought Mrs. Jones "a very happy circumstance." Fortunately, the man, a jolly, rollicking farmer with a very soft spot in his heart for all children, took it good-naturedly and thought it a tremendous joke, and his uproarious merriment called Mrs. Jones upon the scene to reprove him and inquire the cause, greatly to the confusion and distress of poor embarrassed, frightened Maggie. And this was increased by the fact that she took occasion to praise Maggie and Bessie and to say what good, mannerly children they were.
Mr. Jones, however, did not betray confidence, and later on, Maggie changed her opinion; but the "happy circumstance" had remained a family joke ever since, and the expression was frequently brought into use in the sense in which Maggie had employed it, and the children laughed now as the Colonel used the old familiar phrase.

CHAPTER II
.
LETTERS.
They found Lena in the library, ensconced in state in her uncle's comfortable rolling chair, in which, in by-gone days when he was lame and helpless, he had spent many hours, and in which she could easily be conveyed from room to room by the Colonel's man, Starr, without putting her still tender little feet to the ground. It was natural that she should be glad to be down-stairs again after all the past weeks of confinement and suffering; but Maggie and Bessie found her in a state of happiness and excitement unusual with the calm, reserved Lena, and which seemed hardly to be accounted for by the mere fact that she had once more been allowed to join the family circle.
But this was soon explained.
"Maggie and Bessie," she said, with more animation than her little friends had ever seen her show before, "what do you think has happened? Such a wonderful, such a delightful thing! I cannot see how it did happen!"
Such a thing as had "happened" was indeed an unwonted occurrence in Lena's young life; but she had been through so many new experiences lately, that she might almost have ceased to be surprised at anything.
If she could have looked in upon her father and mother and invalid brother Russell, in their far away southern sojourn a few days since, she would have seen what led to the present unexpected occurrence. Mrs. Neville had just read to the two gentlemen a letter from her brother, Colonel Rush, speaking of Lena's continued imprisonment; and they had continued to talk of their little heroine and her achievement.
"Was Lena delirious at any time while she was so very ill?" asked Russell.
"Not exactly delirious," answered his mother, "but somewhat flighty at times; and at those times, and indeed when she was herself, her chief thought and her chief distress seemed to be that she would not be able to enter into competition with her schoolmates for some prize to be gained for composition. Your Aunt Marion told me that this prize was an art education provided by some one for a