listening to courtly compliments from handsome and immaculate gentlemen.
But when, presently, her scattered faculties began to return to a more
normal state, an unquenchable curiosity to know how the miracle was to
be worked, seized upon her. She dropped on her knees beside her father's
chair, took his hand in both of hers, and looked up in his face.

"But how is it to be, papa, dear? I mean, whom am I to go with? and when
am I to go?--dear me, I haven't a thing to wear! Shall I have time to
get any thing ready? Isn't Sophie invited too? How strange it all seems!
I can hardly realize it, somehow. From whom is the letter?"

"Can you remember when you were about nine years old?" inquired the
professor.

"I don't know, I am sure," replied Cornelia, in some surprise at the
irrelevancy of the question. "Nothing particular. Oh! I know! we were in
New York!" said she, beginning to see some connection, and breaking into
a smile.

"Do you remember seeing a lady there," continued the professor, talking
and looking straight at nothing, "who made a great deal of you and
Sophie, and asked you to call her Aunt Margaret?"

"Oh--I believe--I do--," said Cornelia, slowly; "I think I didn't like
her much, because she was deaf or something, and talked in such a high
voice. She wasn't really our aunt, was she? Did she write the letter?"

"Yes, she did, my dear, and invites you and Sophie to spend the summer
with her. You don't dislike her so much as to refuse, I suppose, do
you?"