hese appointed means gradually to
ripen the religious sensibilities of the little stranger, so that she
might be prepared for that stern denunciation of those follies of the
Romish Church amid which she had been educated, and that it would be his
duty at no distant day to declare to her.

The spinster had been so captivated by a certain air of modish elegance
in Adele as to lead her almost to forget the weightier obligations of
her Christian duty toward her. She conceived that she would find in her
a means of recovering some influence over Reuben,--never doubting that
the boy would be attracted by her frolicsome humor, and would be eager
for her companionship. It was possible, moreover, that there might be
some appeal to the boy's jealousies, when he found the favors which he
had spurned were lavished upon Adele. It was therefore in the best of
temper and with the airiest of hopes (though not altogether spiritual
ones) that Miss Eliza conducted the discussion with the Doctor. In two
things only they had differed, and in this each had gained and each lost
a point. The Doctor utterly refused to conform his pronunciation to the
rigors which Miss Eliza prescribed; for him Adele should be always and
only Adaly. On the other hand, the parson's exactions in regard to
sundry modifications of the little girl's dress miscarried: the spinster
insisted upon all the furbelows as they had come from the hands of the
French modiste; and in this she left the field with flying colors.

The next day Doctor Johns wrote to his friend Maverick, announcing the
safe arrival of his child at Ashfield, and spoke in terms which were
warm for him, of the interest which both his sister and himself felt in
her welfare. "He was pained," he said, "to perceive that she spoke
almost with gayety of serious things, and feared greatly that her keen
relish for the beauties and delights of this sinful world, and her
exuberant enjoyment of mere temporal blessings, would make it hard to
wean her from them and to centre her desires upon the eternal world.
But, my friend, all things are possible with God: and I shall diligently
pray that she may return to you, in a few years, sobered in mind, and a
self-denying missionary of the true faith."

XXI.

No such event could take place in Ashfield as the arrival of this young
stranger at the parsonage, without exciting a world of talk up and down
the street. There were stories that she came of a vile Popish family,