e of it, near to; he did not like a whole car-full,
or room-full, or street full,--he did not like to see a woman
sparkle all round.

Mr. Ingraham had come into Dorbury Upper Village some half dozen
years since; had leased the bakery, house, and shop; and two years
afterward, Rachel had come home to stay. She had been left in Boston
with her grandmother when the family had moved out of the city, that
she might keep on a while with the school that she was used to and
stood so well in; with her Chapel classes, also, where she heard
literature and history lectures, each once a week. Ray could not
bear to leave them, nor to give up her Sunday lessons in the dear
old Mission Rooms. Dot was three years younger; she could begin
again anywhere, and their mother could not spare both. Besides,
"what Ray got she could always be giving to Dot afterwards." That is
not so easy, and by no means always follows. Dot turned out the
mother's girl,--the girl of the village, as was said; practical,
comfortable, pleasant, capable, sensible. Ray was something of all
these, with a touch of more; alive in a higher nature, awakened to
receive through upper channels, sensitive to some things that
neither pleased nor troubled Mrs. Ingraham and Dot.

It took a good while to come to know a girl like Ray Ingraham; most
of her young acquaintance felt the _step up_ that they must take to
stand fairly beside her, or come intimately near. Frank Sunderline
felt it too, in certain ways, and did not suppose that she could see
in him more than he saw in himself: a plain fellow, good at his
trade, or going to be; bright enough to know brightness in other
people when he came across it, and with enough of what, independent
of circumstances, goes to the essential making of a gentleman, to
perceive and be attracted by the delicate gentleness that makes a
lady.

That was just what Ray Ingraham did see; only he hardly set it down
in his self-estimate at its full value.

Do you perceive, story-reader, story-raveller, that Frank Sunderline
was not quite in love with either of these girls? Do you see that it
is not a matter of course that he should be?

I can tell you, you girls who make a romance out of the first word,
and who can tell from the first chapter how it will all end, that
you will make great mistakes if you go to interpreting life
so,--your own, or anybody's else.

I can tell you that men--those who are good for very much--come
often more slowly