she was
then--"

"Just ten years old," finished Paula, seeing him cast her an inquiring
glance.

"Very young for such a thoughtful little miss," he exclaimed. "And have
those childish enthusiasms quite departed?" he continued, smiling upon
her with gentle encouragement. "Do you no longer find a fairy-land in
the view up the river?"

She flushed, casting a timid glance at her aunt, but meeting his eyes
again seemed to forget everything and everybody in the inspiration which
his presence afforded.

"I fear I must acknowledge that it is more a fairy-land to me than
ever," she softly replied. "Knowledge does not always bring disillusion,
and though I have learned one by one the names of the towns scattered
along those misty banks, and though I know they are no less prosaic in
their character than our own humdrum village, yet I cannot rid myself of
the notion that those verdant slopes with their archway of clouds, hide
the portals of Paradise, and that I have only to follow the birds in
their flight up the river to find myself on the verge of a mystery, the
banks at my feet can never disclose."

"May the gates of God's Paradise never recede as those would do, my
child, if like the birds you attempted to pierce them."

"Paula is a dreamer," quoth Miss Belinda in a matter-of-fact tone, "but
she is a good girl notwithstanding and can solve a geometrical problem
with the best."

"And sew on the machine and make a very good pie," timidly put in Miss
Abby.

"That is well," laughed Mr. Sylvester, observing that the poor child's
head had fallen forward in maidenly shame at her aunts' elogiums as well
as at the length of the speech into which she had been betrayed. "It
shows that her eyes can see what is at hand as well as what is beyond
our reach." Then with a touch of his usual formal manner intended to
restore her to herself, "Do you like study, Paula?"

In an instant her eyes flashed. "I more than like it; it feeds me.
Knowledge has its vistas too," she added with an arch look, the first he
had seen on her hitherto serious countenance. "I can never outgrow my
recognition of the portals it discloses or the fairy-land it opens up to
every inquiring eye."

"Even geometry," he ventured, more anxious to probe this fresh young
mind than he had ever been to sound the opinions of the most notable men
of the day.

"Even geometry," she smiled. "To be sure its portals are somewhat
methodical in shape, allowing no scope to th