"You're the very darlingest brother I ever had!"

However, being a good-humoured, soft-hearted man, he kissed his lady hurriedly, and vowed that he would take care of the poor little things, whom he would also have kissed, but the darlings refused his caress with many roars.

For the tide of affection had turned now, and the Misses Wellesley McCarty were the darlings of their mother's heart, as Caroline had been in the early days of Putney prosperity.

Mrs. Gann's other lodger was a fantastic youth, Andrea Fitch, to whom his art, and his beard and whiskers, were the darlings of his heart.

"What," she would say, "could Indian rubber, or a pumice stone, have done for these darlings?" I am in no hurry to begin my storyindeed I have little or none to tellso I will just mention an observation of hers connected with that interesting time.

There were three "darlings"; inexcusable tautology!

"Oh, and mamma," she said, "the sweetest party and the dearest supper and the darlingest decorations and the gorgeousest" "Grammar, grammar," spoke Dwight Herbert Deacon.

They are such darlings when they are little, and they are bound, of course, to disappoint one sometimes as they grow older.

So one day, as we sat talking, 'It may be,' says she, 'we shall see things as terrible here in England, as any that can befall our darlings at sea;'

But she seemed to put her happy arms about them, with a simple affectionate conceit, as if she said: "Please don't worry any more over all these ideas, darlings!

When little Jean was born they were greatly interested in the first white baby they had seen, and Ronald said rapturously: "Oh, Mummy, aren't ladies darlings when they are babies?

Oh, my darlings, my darlings!

Oh, my darlings, my darlings!

But did you ever eat the eggs that were triumphantly announced by the darlingest bantam?

"Isn't she the darlingest girl in the world!

And not being in the habit of signing her name, when writing in this familiar way, she finished up with a reference to the darlingest of all dogs by sending its love at the very end: "Love from " and so forth.

These scenes brought the doctor and Grizel very close together; but they became rarer as she grew up, and then for once that she was troubled she was a hundred times irresponsible with glee, and "Oh, you dearest, darlingest," she would cry to him, "I must dance,I must, I must!though it is a fast-day; and you must dance with your mother this instantI am so happy, so happy!"

" "Dearest, darlingest," she said, "I knowI have always known.

I must tell him now, dearest, darlingest," she suddenly called out boldly to the little self she had been so quaintly fond of because there was no other to love her.

"Ah," she said impulsively, when he seemed to be hurt, "don't you see it is because she doubts you that I am so sorry for the poor thing!" "Dearest, darlingest," she called to the child she had been, "don't think that you can come to me when he is away, and whisper things against him to me.

But when I think of your dying, oh, when I think of my being left without you!" She rocked her arms in a frenzy, and called him dearest, darlingest.

"I can't see things as clearly as you do, dearest, darlingest.

"I do know 'ee better nor to think you'd have any sich nonsensical notions; you as be a widow man, and have a-buried sich a lovin' wife, what have a-left 'ee the darlingest little maid to keep.

Even old Cesar seemed to feel the awe of that Valley of Shadow, and no one murmured as we passed the first bloated carcasses of dead horses and came upon that far more horrid sighthuman bodiesswelled to twice their natural size, lying as death had met them, some in piles, others farther apartall unrecognizable, but once proud mothers' petted darlings.

and, moreover, Mothers are jealous, I fear me, too often, too rightfully; fathers Think they have title exclusive to spoiling their own little darlings;