easoned with me kindly, instead of whipping me, I yielded, not to
his sophistry but to that masterful influence before which even he seemed
to bend. I realized the hopelessness of my cause, and found myself
facing Mr. Blight again, an humble suppliant for his pardon. Humbly I
asked him if I might not soon see Penelope again, and she joined in my
petition. Humbly I asked that some day he would bring her back to the
valley, and she seconded my prayer, standing at my side, clasping my hand
and looking up at her uncle from tearful eyes. He promised everything.
He took my hand and hers, and for the moment it seemed that this little
circle was my real family, and that my father and mother, standing over
us, were hardly more than law-given preceptors. Before our guest's
expanding smile and the magic of his tongue the clouds fled. Those which
hung heaviest he brushed away with his restless hands. Soon, very soon,
I was to go to that bustling, pushing town of Pittsburgh and with
Penelope explore its wonders. We should ride behind the fastest pair of
trotters in the State--his trotters; we should see the greatest mills in
the country--his mills--where steel was worked like wax into a thousand
giant forms; we should take long excursions on the river in a wonderful
new boat--his boat-- Why it would make a boy of him just to have us with
him!

Under the spell of his words an hour flew by, and then my mother led
Penelope away to make her ready for the journey. She brought her back to
us decked in a hat and frock born of many days of planning and three
trips to the county town. The humble art of Malcolmville had not been
intrusted with so important a commission as Penelope's best clothes. For
these the shops of Martinsburg, crammed with the latest fashions of
Philadelphia, had been ransacked; the smartest modiste in Martinsburg had
trimmed the hat with many yards of tulle and freighted it with pink
roses; the smartest couturiere in Martinsburg had created that wonderful
blue chintz frock, with ribbons woven through mazes of flounces; the last
touch was my mother's--the plait of hair, done so masterfully that even
the weight of the great blue bow could not bend it.

I looked at Penelope in awe. She was no longer the little girl whom I
had met by the mountain stream. I was still an uncouth boy, with face
smudged with the dust of the fields and hands blackened in play. Yet she
did not see the wide gulf which separated us,