a voice scarce dry of tears:--

"Miss Lucy Wright, though not so tall,
Was just the age of Sophy Ball;
But I have always understood
Miss Sophy was not half so good;
For as they both had faded teeth,
Their teacher sent for Doctor Heath.

"But Sophy made a dreadful rout
And would not have hers taken out;
While Lucy Wright endured the pain,
Nor did she ever once complain.
Her teeth returned quite sound and white,
While Sophy's ached both day and night."

Yet her days were by no means all of reproof nor was her reproof ever
harsher than the more or less pointed selections from the moral verses
could inflict. Under the watchful care of Martha she flourished and was
happy, her mother in little, a laughing whirlwind of tender flesh,
tireless feet, dancing eyes, hair of sunlight that was darkening as she
grew older, and a mind that seemed to him she called father a miracle of
unfoldment. It was a mind not so quickly receptive as he could have
wished to the learning he tried patiently to impart; he wondered,
indeed, if she were not unduly frivolous even for a child of six; for
she would refuse to study unless she could have the doll she called
Bishop Wright with her and pretend that she taught the lesson to him,
finding him always stupid and loth to learn. He hoped for better things
from her mind as she aged, watching anxiously for the buddings of reason
and religion, praying daily that she should be increased in wisdom as in
stature. He had become so used to the look of her mother in her face
that it now and then gave him an instant of unspeakable joy. But the
sound of his own voice calling her "Prudence" would shock him from this
as with an icy blast of truth.

When the children of Amalon came to play with her, the little Nephis,
Moronis, Lehis, and Juabs, he saw she was a creature apart from them, of
another fashion of mind and body. He saw, too, that with some native
intuition she seemed to divine this, and to assume command even of those
older than herself. Thus Wish Wright and his brother, Welcome, both her
seniors by several years, were her awe-bound slaves; and the twin
daughters of Zebedee Bloom obeyed her least whim without question, even
when it involved them in situations more or less delicate. With her
quick ear for rhythm she had been at once impressed by their
names--impressed to a degree that savoured of fascination. She would
seat the two before her, range the other chil