 with
little Jacob, and did ever a child show off when he was wanted, as that child
did, or make such friends as he made!
    »And we are both widows too!« said Barbara's mother. »We must have been made
to know each other.«
    »I haven't a doubt about it,« returned Mrs. Nubbles. »And what a pity it is
we didn't know each other sooner.«
    »But then, you know, it's such a pleasure,« said Barbara's mother, »to have
it brought about by one's son and daughter, that it's fully made up for. Now,
an't it?«
    To this, Kit's mother yielded her full assent, and tracing things back from
effects to causes, they naturally reverted to their deceased husbands,
respecting whose lives, deaths, and burials, they compared notes, and discovered
sundry circumstances that tallied with wonderful exactness; such as Barbara's
father having been exactly four years and ten months older than Kit's father,
and one of them having died on a Wednesday and the other on a Thursday, and both
of them having been of a very fine make and remarkably good-looking, with other
extraordinary coincidences. These recollections being of a kind calculated to
cast a shadow on the brightness of the holiday, Kit diverted the conversation to
general topics, and they were soon in great force again, and as merry as before.
Among other things, Kit told them about his old place, and the extraordinary
beauty of Nell (of whom he had talked to Barbara a thousand times already); but
the last-named circumstance failed to interest his hearers to anything like the
extent he had supposed, and even his mother said (looking accidentally at
Barbara at the same time) that there was no doubt Miss Nell was very pretty, but
she was but a child after all, and there were many young women quite as pretty
as she; and Barbara mildly observed that she should think so, and that she never
could help believing Mr. Christopher must be under a mistake - which Kit
wondered at very much, not being able to conceive what reason she had for
doubting him. Barbara's mother, too, observed that it was very common for young
folks to change at about fourteen or fifteen, and whereas they had been very
pretty before, to grow up quite plain; which truth she illustrated by many
forcible examples, especially one of a young man, who, being a builder with
great
