a thing and I was sure that Marcella
Barry would come back as that the sun rose and set. I hadn't lived
beside her for eight years to know so little about her as to doubt
her. Neither had Doctor John.

Marcella was only eight years old when she came to live in Bridgeport.
Her father, Chester Barry, had just died. Her mother, who was a sister
of Miss Sara Bryant, my next door neighbor, had been dead for four
years. Marcella's father left her to the guardianship of his brother,
Richard Barry; but Miss Sara pleaded so hard to have the little girl
that the Barrys consented to let Marcella live with her aunt until she
was sixteen. Then, they said, she would have to go back to them, to be
properly educated and take the place of her father's daughter in _his_
world. For, of course, it is a fact that Miss Sara Bryant's world was
and is a very different one from Chester Barry's world. As to which
side the difference favors, that isn't for me to say. It all depends
on your standard of what is really worth while, you know.

So Marcella came to live with us in Bridgeport. I say "us" advisedly.
She slept and ate in her aunt's house, but every house in the village
was a home to her; for, with all our little disagreements and diverse
opinions, we are really all one big family, and everybody feels an
interest in and a good working affection for everybody else. Besides,
Marcella was one of those children whom everybody loves at sight, and
keeps on loving. One long, steady gaze from those big grayish-blue
black-lashed eyes of hers went right into your heart and stayed there.

She was a pretty child and as good as she was pretty. It was the right
sort of goodness, too, with just enough spice of original sin in it to
keep it from spoiling by reason of over-sweetness. She was a frank,
loyal, brave little thing, even at eight, and wouldn't have said or
done a mean or false thing to save her life.

She and I were right good friends from the beginning. She loved me and
she loved her Aunt Sara; but from the very first her best and deepest
affection went out to Doctor John Haven, who lived in the big brick
house on the other side of Miss Sara's.

Doctor John was a Bridgeport boy, and when he got through college he
came right home and settled down here, with his widowed mother. The
Bridgeport girls were fluttered, for eligible young men were scarce in
our village; there was considerable setting of caps, I must say that,
although I despise i