escape me, if you are going to be her friend."

Mercy looked up half-shamefacedly and half-archly, and replied,--

"It was not that I wanted to escape you; but I wanted you to escape me."
She perceived that the Parson had been told of her refusals to meet him.
Then they all sat down again on the jutting rock; and Mercy, leaning
forward with her hands clasped on her knees, fixed her eyes on Parson
Dorrance's face, and drank in every word that he said. He had a rare
faculty of speaking with the greatest simplicity, both of language and
manner. It was impossible not to feel at ease in his presence. It was
impossible not to tell him all that he asked. Before you knew it, you were
speaking to him of your own feelings, tastes, the incidents of your life,
your plans and purposes, as if he were a species of father confessor. He
questioned you so gently, yet with such an air of right; he listened so
observantly and sympathetically. He did not treat Mercy Philbrick as a
stranger; for Mrs. Hunter had told him already all she knew of her
friend's life, and had showed him several of Mercy's poems, which had
surprised him much by their beauty, and still more by their condensation
of thought. They seemed to him almost more masculine than feminine; and
he had unconsciously anticipated that in seeing Mercy he would see a woman
of masculine type. He was greatly astonished. He could not associate this
slight, fair girl, with a child's honesty and appeal in her eyes, with the
forceful words he had read from her pen. He pursued his conversation with
her eagerly, seeking to discover the secret of her style, to trace back
the poetry from its flower to its root. It was an astonishment to Mercy to
find herself talking about her own verses with this stranger whom she so
reverenced. But she felt at once as if she had sat at his feet all her
life, and had no right to withhold any thing from her master.

"I suppose, Mrs. Philbrick, you have read the earlier English poets a
great deal, have you not?" he said. "I infer so from the style of some of
your poems."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Mercy, in honest vehemence. "I have read hardly any
thing, Mr. Dorrance. I know Herbert a little; but most of the old English
poets I have never even seen. I have never lived where there were any
books till now."

"You love Wordsworth, I hope," he said inquiringly.

Mercy turned very red, and answered in a tone of desperation, "I've tried
to. Mr. Allen said I must. Bu