ht Marcia
reading the Scottish Chiefs, and while she started guiltily to be found
thus employed he smiled indulgently. After supper he said: "Get your book,
child, and sit down. I have some writing to do, and after it is done I
will read it to you." So after that, more and more often, it was a book
that Marcia held in her hands in the long evenings when they sat together,
instead of some useful employment, and so her education progressed. Thus
she read Epictetus, Rasselas, The Deserted Village, The Vicar of
Wakefield, Paradise Lost, the Mysteries of the Human Heart, Marshall's
Life of Columbus, The Spy, The Pioneers, and The Last of the Mohicans.

She had been asked to sing in the village choir. David sang a sweet high
tenor there, and Marcia's voice was clear and strong as a blackbird's,
with the plaintive sweetness of the wood-robin's.

Hannah Heath was in the choir also, and jealously watched her every move,
but of this Marcia was unaware until informed of it by Miranda. With her
inherited sweetness of nature she scarcely credited it, until one Sunday,
a few weeks after the departure of Harry Temple, Hannah leaned forward
from her seat among the altos and whispered quite distinctly, so that
those around could hear--it was just before the service--"I've just had a
letter from your friend Mr. Temple. I thought you might like to know that
his cousin got well and he has gone back to New York. He won't be
returning here this year. On some accounts he thought it was better not."

It was all said pointedly, with double emphasis upon the "your friend,"
and "some accounts." Marcia felt her cheeks glow, much to her vexation,
and tried to control her whisper to seem kindly as she answered
indifferently enough.

"Oh, indeed! But you must have made a mistake. Mr. Temple is a very slight
acquaintance of mine. I have met him only a few times, and I know nothing
about his cousin. I was not aware even that he had gone away."

Hannah raised her speaking eyebrows and replied, quite loud now, for the
choir leader had stood up already with his tuning-fork in hand, and one
could hear it faintly twang:

"Indeed!"--using Marcia's own word--and quite coldly, "I should have thought
differently from what Harry himself told me," and there was that in her
tone which deepened the color in Marcia's cheeks and caused it to stay
there during the entire morning service as she sat puzzling over what
Hannah could have meant. It rankled in her mind