pale; and
the wilful gaze with which she used to watch her father's home-coming,
came back to her eyes again.

"There is no kind o' use for Emily's being kept at work," said her
father. "She ain't strong; and there's Hannah Lovejoy would be glad to
come and help, and I'd be glad to pay her for it. Emily may have a good
time as well as not."

But his mother was not to be moved.

"Girls used to have a good time and work too, when I was young. Emily
Arnold is strong enough, if folks would let her alone, and not put
notions in her head. And as for Hannah, I'll have none of her."

So Mr Snow saw that if Emily was to have a good time it must be
elsewhere; and he made up his mind to the very best thing he could have
done for her. He fitted her out, and sent her to Mount Holyoke
seminary; that school of schools for earnest, ambitions New England
girls. And a good time she had there, enjoying all that was pleasant,
and never heeding the rest. There were the first inevitable pangs of
home-sickness, making her father doubt whether he had done best for his
darling after all. But, in a little, her letters were merry and
healthful enough. One would never have found out from them anything of
the hardships of long stairs and the fourth storey, or of extra work on
recreation day. Pleasantly and profitably her days passed, and before
she returned home at the close of the year, Mrs Snow had gone, where
the household work is done without weariness. Her father would fain
have kept her at home then, but he made no objections to her return to
school as she wished, and he was left to the silent ministrations of
Hannah Lovejoy in the deserted home again.

By the unanimous voice of his brethren in the church, he was, on the
departure of Deacons Fish and Slowcome, elected to fill the place of one
of them, and in his own way he magnified the office. He was "lonesome,
awful lonesome," at home; but cheerfulness came back to him again, and
there is no one more gladly welcomed at the minister's house, and at
many another house, than he.

There have been changes in the minister's household, too. When his
course in college was over, Arthur came out to the rest. He lingered
one delightful summer in Merleville, and then betook himself to Canada,
to study his profession of the law. For Arthur, wise as the Merleville
people came to think him, was guilty of one great folly in their eye.
He could never, he said, be content to lose his na