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In the mean time Katherine Emmerson paid her promised visit to her friends, and our heroine was in some degree drawn from her musings on love and friendship. The manners of this young lady were conspicuously natural; she had a confirmed habit of calling things by their right names, and never dwelt in the least in superlatives. Her affections seemed centered in the members of her own family; nor had she ever given Julia the least reason to believe she preferred her to her own sister, notwithstanding that sister was married, and beyond the years of romance. Yet Julia loved her cousin, and was hardly ever melancholy or out of spirits when in her company. The cheerful and affectionate good humour of Katherine was catching, and all were pleased with her, although but few discovered the reason. Charles Weston soon forgot his displeasure, and with the exception of Julia’s hidden uneasiness, the house was one quiet scene of peaceful content. The party were sitting at their work the day after the arrival of Katherine, when Julia thought it a good opportunity to intimate her wish to have the society of her friend during the ensuing winter.

“Why did Mr. Miller give up his house in town, I wonder?” said Julia; “I am sure it was inconsiderate to his family.”

“Rather say, my child, that it was in consideration to his children that he did so,” observed Miss Emmerson; “his finances would not bear the expense, and suffer him to provide for his family after his death.”

“I am sure a little money might be spent now, to indulge his children in society, and they would be satisfied with less hereafter,” continued Julia. “Mr. Miller must be rich; and think, aunt, he has seven grown up daughters that he has dragged with him into the wilderness; only think, Katherine, how solitary they must be.”

“Had I six sisters I could be solitary no where,” said Katherine, simply; “besides, I understand that the country where Mr. Miller resides is beautiful and populous.”

“Oh! there are men and women enough, I dare say,” cried Julia; “and the family is large–eleven in the whole; but they must feel the want of friends in such a retired place.”

“What, with six sisters!” said Katherine, laughing and shaking her head.

“There is a difference between a sister end a friend, you know,” said Julia, a little surprised.

“I–indeed I have yet to learn that,” exclaimed the other, in a little more astonishment.

“Why you feel affection for your sisters from nature and habit; but friendship is voluntary, spontaneous, and a much stronger feeling–friendship is a sentiment.”

“And cannot one feel this sentiment, as you call it, for a sister?” asked Katherine, smiling.

“I should think not,” returned Julia, musing; “I never had a sister; but it appears to me that the very familiarity of sisters would be destructive to friendship.”

“Why I thought it was the confidence–the familiarity–the secrets–which form the very essence of friendship.” cried Katherine; “at least so I have always heard.”

“True,” said Julia, eagerly, “you speak true–the confidence and the secrets–but not the–the–I am not sure that I express myself well–but the intimate knowledge that one has of one’s own sister–that I should think would be destructive to the delicacy of friendship.”

“Julia means that a prophet has never honour in his own country,” cried Charles with a laugh–“a somewhat doubtful compliment to your sex, ladies, under her application of it.”

“But what becomes of your innate evidence of worth in friendship,” asked Miss Emmerson; “I thought that was the most infallible of all kinds of testimony: surely that must bring you intimately acquainted with each other’s secret foibles too.”

“Oh! no–that is a species of sentimental knowledge,” returned Julia; “it only dwells on the loftier parts of the character, and never descends to the minute knowledge which makes us suffer so much in each other’s estimation: it leaves all these to be filled by the–by the–by the–what shall I call it?”