h, the one other person in the
world who understood her, made little difference. A hundred Aunt Hannahs
could not console her for this loss--for a loss she called it.
"The woman is taking him from me!" She cried the words aloud to herself
on her lonely walks, making the cattle in the fields, the horses in the
stable, the small greyhound, even the fields and trees, confidants in her
woe. "She is stealing you from me," she reproached Clem; "and you can't
see that she is a witch! You don't love me any longer!" "I love you
better than ever," protested poor Clem. "No, you don't, or you would
choose between us. Say 'I hate her!'" But Clem shook his head.
"I don't hate her; and besides, she isn't a witch."

She had been forbidden to speak to Calvin for a week. "My dear man," she
answered Mr. Sam, to his no small astonishment, "do you think _I_ want to
talk to the pimply creature? He tells fibs; and besides, he's a robber."

"You are a wicked child; and if you persist in this talk, I shall have to
punish you."

"Are you going to beat me? Beat away. But it's true."

He did not beat her; but one day, meeting Hester on the hill as she walked
to school, he went so far as to suggest that Myra's spirit needed taming.
She had been allowed to run loose, and her behaviour at home caused him
many searchings of heart. He made no doubt that her behaviour in school
was scarcely more satisfactory.

Hester admitted that he surmised correctly.

He had never been blessed with a daughter of his own, and hardly knew what
to do with an unruly girl. Might he leave the matter in Miss Marvin's
hands?

"If," said Hester, "you are speaking of her behaviour in school, you
certainly may. She is jealous, poor child, because her brother has taken
a fancy to be fond of me. In her place I should be furious. But I think
we are going to be friends."

"Some form of punishment--if I might suggest--"

"I don't know of any that meets the case," Hester answered gravely.

"I have often,"--he fastened on her that gaze of his which she most of all
disliked--"I have oftentimes, of late especially, felt even Calvin to be a
responsibility, without a mother's care." He went on from this to the
suggestion he had hinted to Mrs. Purchase. Would Miss Marvin be prepared
(for an honorarium) to give his son private lessons? Could she afford the
time? "I shrink from exposing him to influences, so often malign, of a
boarding-school. What I should m