frain from doing.

This was putting it rather strongly. Elizabeth was far from assuming
such a position in relation to the minister. But she had sense and
judgment, and frankness and simplicity of manner, and no doubt she found
it pleasant to be listened to, and deferred to, as Mr Maxwell was in
the habit of doing. And she knew she could help him, and that she had
helped him, many a time. He was inexperienced, to say nothing more, and
she gave him many a hint with regard to some of the doubtful measures
and crooked natures in Gershom society, which prevented some stumbles,
and guided him safely past some difficult places on his first entrance
into it. But she had done more and better than that for him though she
herself hardly knew it.

Squire Holt's house was a pleasant house to visit, and during the first
homesick and miserable days of his stay in Gershom, when he would gladly
have turned his back on his vocation and his duties, the bright and
cheerful welcome there that Elizabeth gave him on that first night when
Clifton took him home with him, and ever after that night, was like a
strengthening cordial to one who needed it surely. Miss Elizabeth was
several years younger than he, but she felt a great deal older and wiser
in some respects than the student whose experience of life had been so
limited and so different, and so it came to pass that, at the very
first, she had fallen into the way of advising him, and even of
expostulating with him on small occasions, and he had not resented it,
but had been grateful for it, and at last rather liked it. He had
brightened under her influence, and now the thought of her was
associated with all the agreeable and hopeful circumstances of his new
life and work.

He said to himself often, and he wrote to his friend Miss Martha
Langden, that the friendship of Miss Elizabeth Holt was one of his best
helps in the faithful performance of his pastoral duties, and that
excellent and venerable lady at once assigned to Mr Maxwell's friend
the same place in his regard, and in his parish generally, that she
herself had occupied in the regard of several successive pastors, and in
her native parish for forty years at least. It never occurred to Miss
Langden, and it certainly never occurred to Mr Maxwell, that this
friendship could be in any danger of interfering with the wishes and
plans of former years. That it might affect in any way his future
relations with the pretty and am