John Brightly jumped out of bed. He filled
his short and stout pantaloons with a pair of legs
proportionable, and ran to the window.

Nothing to be seen through the thick frost upon
the panes, until he had breathed himself a round
eye-hole bearing upon his thermometer.

That erect little sentry had an emphatic fact
to communicate to the scrutinizing eye of John
Brightly. It was a very frigid fact, and made the
eye that perceived it shiver a little. But the temperature
of Brightly's mind was perpetual summer.
The iciest ideas admitted into his brain became
warmed and melted by the sunny spirits there;
and so it was with this cold fact which the cold
mercury fired at him through its cold glass barrel.

“Zero!” said he, “a sharp zero, Mrs. Brightly!”

A pretty, delicate, anxious face, lifted itself from
the pillow by the side of its fellow, still depressed
in the middle and high at the sides as her husband's
head had left it.

“Zero!” rejoined a voice sweet, but feeble. “I

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should think by your tone that you had just seen
the earliest bluebird. I have half a mind to go into
a rage with you, John, for being so utterly contented.”

“When you have your first rage, Mary Brightly,
I shall have my first discontent. But I cannot
scold Zero when I see what a wonderful artist he
is. Look at this window. See this magic frostlandscape.
It is a beautiful thought that such
exquisite fancies are always in the air waiting to
be discovered.”

“The chill finds the latent pictures, as sorrow
makes poets sing.”

“Well said! We each owe the other one. And
what did you dream of last night, Mrs. Brightly?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes; you must have dreamed of the tropics,
and breathed out palms and vines and tree-ferns in
your dreams.”

“As the girl in the fairy-tale dropped pearls and
diamonds when she spoke. Perhaps I did. But
how did you detect me?”

“Here they are all upon the window, just as you
exhaled them. Here on this pane is a picture,
crowded as a photograph of a jungle on the
Amazon. Here are long feathery bamboos, drooping
palms, stiff palms, and such a beautiful bewilderment
of vines and creepers by a river sparkling in
the sunshine. And here, hullo! here is an alligator
done in ice, nabbing an iced boa-constrictor.
Delicious! Do come and see, Mary!”

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“Zero forbids,” said she, with a pretty shiver.
“I 'll see them with your eyes, John.”

“Well. And while you were dreaming out this
enchanted vision, I must have been snoring forth
my recollections of the forests of Maine. Here
they are on the next pane by way of pendant and
contrast. `This is the forest primeval.' Here
are pines in full feather and pines without a rag
on their poor bare branches, pines lying on the
ground, and pines that fell half-way and were
caught in the arms of brother pines. Pines, hemlocks,
and the finest arbor-vitæ I ever saw, all
crusted with glittering ice and hanging over a
mountain lake. I think I like this better than the
tropics. Do come, Mrs. Brightly.”

“Zero doubly forbids my going to a colder
climate. But it is delightful to be here, warm and
comfortable, and listen to your raptures.”

“Mary,” said Brightly, turning to her with a
grave and tender manner.

“What, John?”

“I find a different picture on the next pane. Do
you remember our two dear little ones?”

“Do we remember them?” she asked with tearful
eyes.

“God knows we do! and here among these
lovely frost-pictures I find a memorial of them.
Shall I describe it?”

“Yes, dear John,” said she, by this time weeping
abundantly.

“I see a little promontory jutting into a great

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river. Evergreens grow about the edges. The
top is nearly clear. It is a graveyard, Mary. In
one corner, under a hemlock heavy with snow, and
within a railing, I see two simple white stones,
such as are put over children's graves. It is
strangely like a scene that we have looked at very
sadly together. Shall I read the names I almost
fancy I decipher upon the stones?”

“Do, dear John,” she said between her sobs.
“All memories of them are beautiful to me.”

“John, son of John and Mary Brightly, drowned
at eight years of age, while endeavoring to rescue
his drowning sister Mary. `In death they were
not divided.'”

Brightly took his wife's hand very tenderly, as
in this grave, formal way he recalled their domestic
tragedy.

“We do not repine, my love,” said he.

He was a singularly sturdy, bold, energetic-looking
man; almost belligerent indeed, except that
an expression of frank good-nature showed that,
though warlike, he would not wage war unless on
compulsion, and when peace was impossible. His
face was round and ruddy, his hair light, his eyes
dark blue, his figure of the middle height, and
solid as if he was built to carry weight. Evidently
a man to make himself heard and felt, one to
hit hard if he hit at all. It was a shrewd and able
face, and if it had a weakness, it was that there
was too much frankness, too much trustfulness,
too little reserve in it. A rough observer would

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hardly have suspected this burly, boyish, exuberant
man of thirty of so much delicacy of feeling and
tenderness as he had shown in this interview with
his wife.

“We do not repine, my love, for their loss,” he
repeated.

“I am sometimes very lonely, John, she hesitatingly
said. “Our little Mary was growing just
old enough to be a companion to me; and John
too, — I do not know which I loved best.”

“I must find you,” said Brightly, in his cheerful
tone, “a nice little maiden or a fine little fellow to
adopt.”

“O if you would!” she exclaimed.

“Which shall it be?” he asked with a business
air. He occupied himself in erasing with his
breath the picture which had recalled their bereavement.

As the frost vanished, the scenery without
appeared. No very vast or very attractive view.
Most of the respectable citizens of New York have
similar landscape privileges. Brightly's bedroom
window was perforated in the front of a handsome
precipice of brown freestone. It looked down
upon a snowy ravine, planted alternately with
lamp-posts and ailanthus-trees; opposite was another
long precipice of brown stone, evidently
excavated into dwellings for the better class of
troglodytes.

“Are you serious, John?” asked Mrs. Brightly,
drying her tears.

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“Certainly,” says he. “What do I live and
work for except that my wife shall have everything
she wants?”

“Don't claim to be too disinterested! I am
sure you are dying to have me approve your
scheme.”

“I think we are both growing excited about it.
But let us come to a conclusion. Which shall it
be, boy or girl?”

“Boys are so merry and noisy in a solitary
house,” said Mrs. Brightly, thinking of her son.

“Girls are so gentle and quiet,” Brightly returned.

“But then I am so afraid boys will get riotous
companions, and be taught to smoke pipes.”

“And girls must learn music and flirtation.”

Each parent was evidently trifling away tears.
The loss of their children was a bitter chapter in
their history. They dared no more than glance at
it, for fear their childless life should seem but idle,
aimless business.

“We must draw lots,” said Brightly, assuming
a serio-comic air.

Mrs. Brightly, still couchant, watched smiling,
while he took a clothes-broom and selected two
straws.

“Graver matters have been decided by lot,”
said Brightly. “Draw, Mary. If you get the
shorter straw, it 's a girl; if the longer, a boy.”

She coquetted a little, and finally selected her
straw. They compared them carefully.

She had drawn a girl.

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“I do hereby bind myself and mortgage my
property,” said Brightly, holding up his hand, as
if he were taking a judicial oath, “to present to
Mrs. John Brightly of the City of New York, on
or before the 31st of December instant, one attractive
and intelligent damsel not over fourteen years
of age; to be by her, the said donee Brightly,
adopted and brought up to the best of her knowledge
and belief, either as daughter, step-daughter,
companion, or handmaiden, as to the said Brightly
may seem good. And thereto I plight thee my
troth.”

Mrs. Brightly laughed at this pledge. “But
how are you going to find her, John?” she asked.

“I always find the things I look for; unless
they find me as soon as they know I 'm in search
of them.”

“Success will spoil you some of these days.”

“Not if I lose what I prize success for. But
this new child of ours shall be a new spur to me.”

“She must be an orphan, John, or she will not
love us as much as we shall love her.”

“An orphan of course. I think I shall put an
advertisement in the paper to this effect: — Wanted
to adopt. An orphan of poor but respectable
parentage, beautiful as a cherub, clean as a new-laid
egg, with a character of docility and determination
in equal parts; eyes blue, voice tranquil,
laugh electric; one whose heart sings and heels
dance spontaneously; a thing of beauty willing to
be a joy forever in the house of a prosperous

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banker, where she will be spoiled all day by the
mistress and spoiled from dinner to bedtime by the
master. No Irish, orange-girls, or rag-babies need
apply.”

“It is impossible not to be in good spirits where
you are, John,” said the little wife. “How doleful
I should be all day, unless you compelled me to
begin my morning with a course of laughter!”

“I don't know any better medicine,” said he.
“I take all I can get, and give all I can. Well;
you approve of my advertisement?”

“As a description of what we want, it is perfect.”

“I will pop it into the paper to-day, and to-morrow
morning there will be a deadlock of dirty children
in this street, and a deadlock of dirty parents
up and down the cross streets, for half a dozen
blocks, — parents and children all waiting to be
adopted. By the way, Mary,” Brightly rattled on,
“you must plunge into Zero, and dress and give
me my breakfast in a hurry.”

“O John, when will you have made money
enough not to be in a hurry any more?”

“When I have hurried through my hurries. But
I must be early in Wall Street this morning, for
another reason. This talk about advertisements
reminds me that I have advertised for an office-boy.
I dare say there are a hundred juvenile noses flattening
against my windows already. It will be
deadlock there, too, by the time I get down. I am
afraid poor Broke will be quite bewildered out of
his wits, if he arrives first.”

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