any one, dear Miss Featherstone, who had had so much
trouble?--my husband's death and all."

The young girl did not reply. Visions of her own lonely home rose
before her--her mother fading slowly away under an accumulation of
misfortunes; her only brother shot in the Union army; her father
sinking into almost a dishonored grave through hopeless liabilities
brought on indirectly by the war; she, petted and idolized, the only
remaining member of the family, seeking her daily bread and finding a
pittance by working among strangers. She hung her head and had not a
word with which to reply.

"I dare say you've had troubles of your own," exclaimed Mrs. Pinckney.
"Of course you have, or you wouldn't be here, you dear creature! It is
well for me that you are here, though," kissing her affectionately.
"Now, everything must be just right when this haughty, fastidious
brother-in-law of mine comes. He isn't apt to find fault, but I am
conscious that he is secretly criticising my dress, my dinners, the
gaucheries of the servants, my moral qualities, even the way I turn my
sentences. I shouldn't mind trying to talk my very best English if he
were not prying into my motives: it is difficult to be on one's guard
in every direction," with a sigh.

"I should think he'd be very disagreeable," said Miss Featherstone.

"No:" the _no_ was hesitating. "He is dangerously attractive: at least
he attracts me. I'm all the time wondering what he is thinking, which
keeps me perpetually thinking of him. He is a Southerner, you know, and
was in the army; so you must be very careful,'my dear mees,' as Mr.
Brown says, not to come out with your 'truly loyal' sentiments: he
won't like them."

"I don't care whether he likes them or not." Miss Featherstone's face
was crimson: it was the first spark of temper she had shown since she
came into the house.

Mrs. Pinckney looked at her in surprise, then laughed: "I'm delighted
to see something human about you: I thought you were a saint."

"By no manner of means," returned the governess curtly.

"I shall warn Dick not to get upon the subject of the war," was the
note that Mrs. Pinckney, inconsequent as she generally was, made of the
scene.--"But I'm forgetting why I sent for you," she said aloud. "I
want you to go to town and buy Christmas presents and quantities of
things to eat and drink. I was going myself, but I never can count upon
a day as to being well with any certainty," with rather an ostenta