n words
kept running through his mind--"A little girl--a little girl in Old
Salem"--for the almost two hundred years gave her the right to that
eminence, and a little girl from a foreign land seemed incongruous. Not
but that there were little girls in Salem, but their life-lines did not
touch his. And this one came so near, for the sake of both parents he
had loved.

When he came in to dinner, he had made up his mind to say nothing of his
letter until the guests had come and gone. He did not wish to be deluged
with questions.

He hunted up Cousin Giles the next day, who was quite a real-estate
dealer, investing his own and other people's money in sound mortgages,
who had been a widower so long that he had quite gone back to
bachelorhood.

And he found three Thatcher cousins--a widow, a married one, and a
single one, the youngest of the family, but past girlhood. He was asked
to take luncheon with them and they proved quite agreeable and
intelligent, and much pleased at the prospect of seeing Elizabeth and
Eunice Leverett.

"We have been hunting up several of the Boston relatives," said Miss
Thatcher, with a kind of winsome smile. "Cousin Giles has been a good
directory. We've kept in with so few of them. Father hunted up some of
them while he was in the Legislature, but they are so scattered about
and many of them dead. Mother was your father's cousin, I believe."

Chilian gave a graceful inclination of the head.

"Elizabeth and Eunice visited us years ago, along after the war when I
was first left a widow," explained Mrs. Brent. "Henry went all through
it, but was worn out, and died in '88. But I've two nice sons, who are a
great comfort. Father was very good to them and me. And they're both
promising farmers."

"I tell her that's a good deal to be thankful for," remarked Cousin
Giles.

"It is indeed," commented Chilian.

"And I have a lad who is all for study and wants to come in to Harvard.
He has been teaching school this winter. His father's quite set against
it, and I don't know how it will end. He will be only nineteen in
August, and his father thinks he has a hold on him two years longer."

Mrs. Drayton looked up rather appealingly.

"If his mind is made up to that, he will work his way through," said
Chilian, and he thought he should like to know the boy.

"You see the next two are girls and they can't help much about a farm.
Father really needs him. And I seem to stand between two fires. His
t