rin' brown hair, if it ain't neither false or dyed? Back in the third
chapter 'twas _black_, like her eyes."

Caroline burst into another laugh. Pearson blushed to his forehead.
"Well, by George!" he admitted, "you're right. I believe I did have it
black, at first."

"You sartin did! I ain't got any objections to either color, only it
ought to stay put, hadn't it? In a town of the size she's livin' in, a
girl with changeable hair is likely to be kind of conspicuous. I tell
you! maybe it bleached out in the sun. Ho, ho!"

The writer made a note on the margin of his manuscript and declared
that his heroine's tresses and eyes should be made to correspond at
all stages. They did, but they remained brown. Captain Elisha chuckled
inwardly, but offered no further comments. Caroline, whose own hair and
eyes were brown, did not refer to the matter at all.

She and the young man became better acquainted at each succeeding
"literary clinic," as the latter called them. When Rodgers Warren first
introduced him at their former home he had impressed her favorably,
largely because of her desire to like anyone whom her father fancied.
She worshiped the dead broker, and his memory to her was sacred. She
would have forgiven and did forgive any wrong he might have done her,
even his brother's appointment as guardian, though that she could not
understand. Unlike Stephen, who fiercely resented the whole affair and
said bitter things concerning his parent, she believed he had done what
he considered right. Her feeling against Captain Elisha had been based
upon the latter's acceptance of that appointment when he should have
realized his unfitness. And his living with them and disgracing them in
the eyes of their friends by his uncouth, country ways, made her blind
to his good qualities. The Moriarty matter touched her conscience,
and she saw more clearly. But she was very far from considering him
an equal, or other than what Mrs. Corcoran Dunn termed him, an
"encumbrance," even yet. She forced herself to be kind and tolerant and
gave him more of her society, though the church-going experience was
not repeated, nor did she accompany him on his walks or out-of-door
excursions.

If Pearson's introductions had been wholly as a friend of her
guardian, her feeling toward him might have been tinged with the same
condescension or aversion, even. But, hallowed as he was by association
with her father, she welcomed him for the latter's sake. And, a