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MISS ELIZA being fairly seated in the Doctor's
study, with great eagerness to hear what might
be the subject of his communication, the parson, with
the letter in his hand, asked if she remembered an
old college friend, Maverick, who had once paid them
a vacation visit at Canterbury.

“Perfectly,” said Miss Eliza, whose memory was
both keen and retentive; “and I remember that you
have said he once passed a night with you, during
the lifetime of poor Rachel, here at Ashfield. You
have a letter from him?”

“I have,” said the parson; “and it brings a proposal
about which I wish your opinion.” And the
Doctor cast his eye over the letter.

“He expresses deep sympathy at my loss, and alludes
very pleasantly to the visit you speak of, all
which I will not read; after this he says, `I little
thought, when bantering you in your little study upon
your family prospects, that I too was destined to become
the father of a child, within a couple of years.
Yet it is even so; and the responsibility weighs upon

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me greatly. I love my Adèle with my whole heart;
I am sure you cannot love your boy more, though
perhaps more wisely.”

“And he had never told you of his marriage?”
said the spinster.

“Never; it is the only line I have had from him
since his visit ten years ago.”

The Doctor goes on with the reading: —

“It may be from a recollection of your warnings
and of your distrust of the French character, or possibly
it may be from the prejudices of my New England
education, but I cannot entertain pleasantly the
thought of her growing up to womanhood under the
influences which are about her here. What those
influences are you will not expect me to explain in
detail. I am sure it will be enough to win upon your
sympathy to say that they are Popish and thoroughly
French. I feel a strong wish, therefore, — much as
I am attached to the dear child, — to give her the
advantages of a New England education and training.
And with this wish, my thought reverts naturally to
the calm quietude of your little town and of your
household; for I cannot doubt that it is the same under
the care of your sister as in the old time.”

“I am glad he thinks so well of me,” said Miss
Eliza, but with an irony in her tone that she was sure
the good parson would never detect.

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The Doctor looks at her thoughtfully a moment,
over the edge of the letter, — as if he, too, had his
quiet comparisons to make, — then goes on with the
letter: —

“This wish may surprise you, since you remember
my old battlings with what I counted the rigors of a
New England `bringing-up'; but in this case I should
not fear them, provided I could assure myself of
your kindly supervision. For my little Adèle, besides
inheriting a great flow of spirits (from her father,
you will say) and French blood, has been used thus
far to a catholic latitude of talk and manner in all
about her, which will so far counterbalance the gravities
of your region as to leave her, I think, upon a
safe middle ground. At any rate, I see enough to
persuade me to choose rather the errors that may
grow upon her girlhood there than those that would
grow upon it here.

“Frankly, now, may I ask you to undertake, with
your good sister, for a few years, the responsibility
which I have suggested?”

The Doctor looked over the edge of the sheet toward
Miss Eliza.

“Read on, Benjamin,” said she.

“The matter of expenses, I am happy to say, is
one which need not enter into your consideration of
the question. My business successes have been such

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that any estimate which you may make of the moneys
required will be at your call at the office of our house
in Newburyport.

“I have the utmost faith in you, my dear Johns;
and I want you to have faith in the earnestness with
which I press this proposal on your notice. You will
wonder, perhaps, how the mother of my little Adèle
can be a party to such a plan; but I may assure you,
that, if your consent be gained, it will meet with no
opposition in that quarter. This fact may possibly
confirm some of your worst theories in regard to
French character; and in this letter, at least, you
will not expect me to combat them.

“I have said that she has lived thus far under
Popish influences; but her religious character is of
course unformed; indeed, she has as yet developed
in no serious direction whatever; I think you will
find a tabula rasa to write your tenets upon. But,
if she comes to you, do not, I beg of you, grave
them too harshly; she is too bird-like to be treated
with severity; and I know that under all your gravity,
my dear Johns, there is a kindliness of heart, which,
if you only allowed it utterance, would win greatly
upon this little fondling of mine. And I think that
her open, laughing face may win upon you.

“Adèle has been taught English, and I have purposely
held all my prattle with her in the same tongue,

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and her familiarity with it is such that you would
hardly detect a French accent. I am not particularly
anxious that she should maintain her knowledge of
French; still, should a good opportunity occur, and
a competent teacher be available, it might be well
for her to do so. In all such matters I should rely
greatly on your judgment.

“Now, my dear Johns,” —

Miss Eliza interrupts by saying, “I think your friend
is very familiar, Benjamin.”

“Why not? why not, Eliza? We were boys together.”

And he continues with the letter: —

“My dear Johns, I want you to consider this matter
fairly; I need not tell you that it is one that lies
very near my heart. Should you determine to accept
the trust, there is a ship which will be due at
this port some four or five months from now, whose
master I know well, and with whom I should feel safe
to trust my little Adèle for the voyage, providing
at the same time a female attendant upon whom I
can rely, and who will not leave the little voyager
until she is fairly under your wing. In two or three
years thereafter, at most, I hope to come to receive
her from you; and then, when she shall have made
a return visit to Europe, it is quite possible that I
may establish myself in my own country again.

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Should you wish it, I could arrange for the attendant
to remain with her; but I confess that I should prefer
the contrary. I want to separate her for the time,
so far as I can, from all the influences to which she
has been subject here; and further than this, I have
a strong faith in that self-dependence which seems
to me to grow out of your old-fashioned New England
training.”

“That is all,” said the Doctor, quietly folding
the letter. “What do you think of the proposal,
Eliza?”

“I like it, Benjamin.”

The spinster was a woman of quick decision. Had
it been proposed to receive an ordinary pupil in the
house for any pecuniary consideration, her pride would
have revolted on the instant. But here was a child
of an old friend of the Doctor, a little Christian waif,
as it were, floating toward them from that unbelieving
world of France.

“Surely it will be a worthy and an honorable task
for Benjamin” (so thought Miss Eliza) “to redeem
this little creature from its graceless fortune; possibly,
too, the companionship may soften that wild boy,
Reuben. This French girl, Adèle, is rich, well-born;
what if, from being inmates of the same house, the
two should come by and by to be joined by some
tenderer tie?”

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The possibility, even, of such a dawn of sentiment
under the spinster's watchful tutelage was a delightful
subject of reflection to her. It is remarkable
how even the cunningest and the coolest of practical-minded
women delight in watching the growth of
sentiment in others, — and all the more strongly, if
they can foster it by their artifices and provoke it into
demonstration.

Miss Johns, too, without being imaginative, prefigured
in her mind the image of the little French
stranger, with foreign air and dress, tripping beside
her up the meeting-house aisle, looking into her face
confidingly for guidance, attracting the attention of
the simple towns-people in such sort that a distinction
would belong to her protégée which would be pleasantly
reflected upon herself. A love of distinction
was the spinster's prevailing sin, — a distinction growing
out of the working of good deeds, if it might be,
but at any rate some worthy and notable distinction.
The Doctorate of her good brother, his occasional discourses
which had been subject of a public mention
that she never forgot, were objects of a more than
sisterly fondness. If her sins were ever to meet with
a punishment in the flesh, they would know no sharper
one than in a humiliation of her pride.

“I think,” said she, “that you can hardly decline
the proposal of Mr. Maverick, Benjamin.”

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“And you will take the home care of her?” asked
the Doctor.

“Certainly. She would at first, I suppose, attend
school with Reuben and the young Elderkins?”

“Probably,” returned the Doctor; “but the more
special religious training which I fear the poor girl
needs must be given at home, Eliza.”

“Of course, Benjamin.”

It was further agreed between the two that a French
attendant would make a very undesirable addition to
the household, as well as sadly compromise their efforts
to build up the little stranger in full knowledge
of the faith.

The Doctor was earnest in his convictions of the
duty that lay before him, and his sister's consent to
share the charge left him free to act. He felt all
the best impulses of his nature challenged by the
proposal. Here, at least, was one chance to snatch
a brand from the burning, — to lead this poor little
misguided wayfarer into those paths which are “paths
of pleasantness.” No image of French grace or of
French modes was prefigured to the mind of the parson;
his imagination had different range. He saw
a young innocent (so far as any child in his view
could be innocent) who prattled in the terrible language
of Rousseau and Voltaire, who by the providence
of God had been born in a realm where all

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iniquities flourished, and to whom, by the further and
richer providence of God, a means of escape was now
offered. He would no more have thought of declining
the proposed service, even though the poor girl
were dressed in homespun and clattered in sabots,
than he would have closed his ear to the cry of a
drowning child.

Within that very week the Doctor wrote his reply
to Maverick. He assured him that he would most
gladly undertake the trust he had proposed, — “hoping,
by God's grace, to lead the little one away from
the delusions of sense and the abominations of Antichrist,
to the fold of the faithful.”

“I could wish,” he continued, “that you had given
me more definite information in regard to the character
of her early religious instruction, and told me
how far the child may still remain under the mother's
influence in this respect; for, next to special interposition
of Divine Grace, I know no influence so
strong in determining religious tendencies as the early
instruction or example of a mother.

“My sister has promised to give home care to the
little stranger, and will, I am sure, welcome her with
zeal. It will be our purpose to place your daughter
at the day-school of a worthy person, Miss Betsey
Onthank, who has had large experience, and under
whose tuition my boy Reuben has been for some time

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established. My sister and myself are both of opinion
that the presence of any French attendant upon
the child would be undesirable.

“I hope that God may have mercy upon the French
people, — and that those who dwell temporarily among
them may be watched over and be graciously snatched
from the great destruction that awaits the ungodly.”

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