eir noses; stray, homeless cats
rubbed against his legs, and vagrant dogs looked up at him trustfully
with wagging tails.

Yet his goodness, as Emerson would have said, had some edge to it.
Honora had seen the light of anger in his blue eye--a divine ray. Once
he had chastised her for telling Aunt Mary a lie (she could not have
lied to him) and Honora had never forgotten it. The anger of such a man
had indeed some element in it of the divine; terrible, not in volume,
but in righteous intensity. And when it had passed there was no occasion
for future warning. The memory of it lingered.

CHAPTER III. CONCERNING PROVIDENCE

What quality was it in Honora that compelled Bridget to stop her ironing
on Tuesdays in order to make hot waffles for a young woman who was late
to breakfast? Bridget, who would have filled the kitchen with righteous
wrath if Aunt Mary had transgressed the rules of the house, which were
like the laws of the Medes and Persians! And in Honora's early youth
Mary Ann, the housemaid, spent more than one painful evening writing
home for cockle shells and other articles to propitiate our princess,
who rewarded her with a winning smile and a kiss, which invariably
melted the honest girl into tears. The Queen of Scots never had a more
devoted chamber woman than old Catherine,--who would have gone to the
stake with a smile to save her little lady a single childish ill, and
who spent her savings, until severely taken to task by Aunt Mary,
upon objects for which a casual wish had been expressed. The saints
themselves must at times have been aweary from hearing Honora's name.

Not to speak of Christmas! Christmas in the little house was one wild
delirium of joy. The night before the festival was, to all outward
appearances, an ordinary evening, when Uncle Tom sat by the fire in his
slippers, as usual, scouting the idea that there would be any Christmas
at all. Aunt Mary sewed, and talked with maddening calmness of the news
of the day; but for Honora the air was charged with coming events of
the first magnitude. The very furniture of the little sitting-room had
a different air, the room itself wore a mysterious aspect, and the
cannel-coal fire seemed to give forth a special quality of unearthly
light.

"Is to-morrow Christmas?" Uncle Tom would exclaim. "Bless me! Honora, I
am so glad you reminded me."

"Now, Uncle Tom, you knew it was Christmas all the time!"

"Kiss your uncle good night, Honora, and go