berate way.

"It is as we feared," turning to me. "It's quite gone, Hester, quite.
I'll have to begin at the beginning again. It would have been better I
had not trusted the whole to Knopps,--yes."

I said nothing: the news was not altogether unexpected. He took off his
wig, and rubbed his head slowly, his eyes fixed on my face with some
anxious, steady inquiry, which his tones did not express.

"I'll go back to Newport. Rob's there. I'll get a school again. You did
not know I taught there when I was a young man?"

"No."

I knew nothing of my husband's youth. Miss Monchard, his ward, who was
in the room, did, however; and after waiting for me a moment to go on,
she said, cheerfully,--

"The boys will be men now, Sir. Friends ready waiting. And different
sort of friends from any we have here, eh?"

He laughed.

"Yes, Jacky, you're right. Yes. They've all turned out well, even those
Arndts. Jim Arndt used to trot you on his knee on the school-house
steps, when you were a baby. But he _was_ a wild chap. He's in the
sugar-trade, Rob writes me. But they'll always be boys to me,
Jacky,--boys."

His head dropped, with a smile still on his mouth, and he began
fingering his scanty beard, as was his habit in his fits of silent
musing. Jacqueline looked at him satisfied, then turned to me. I do not
know what she saw upon my face, but she turned hastily away.

"It's a town with a real character of its own, Newport, Mrs.
Manning,"--trying to make her coarse bass voice gentle. "You'll
understand it better than I. New-York houses, now, even these on the
Hudson, hint at nothing but a satisfied animal necessity. But there,
with the queer dead streets, like a bit of the old-time world, and the
big salt sea"----She began to stammer, as usual, and grow confused.
"It's like looking out of some far-gone, drowsy old day of the Colonies,
and yet feeling life and eternity fresh and near to you."

I only smiled civilly, by way of answer. Jacqueline always tried me. She
was Western-born, I a New-Englander; and every trait about her, from the
freedom with which she hurled out her opinions to the very setting-down
of her broad foot, jarred on me as a something boorish and reckless. Her
face grew red now.

"I don't say what I want exactly," she hesitated. "I only hoped you'd
like the town, that it would reconcile----There's crabs there,"
desperately turning to Teddy, who was playing a furtive game of marbles
under the table, and grab