ing, so that he was fain to
comfort her with nearer contact, gentleness in his own sad eyes, and a
pressure of her large hand.

"It's all right, I s'pose," she said, sadly; "but I didn't reckon on
yer havin' any relations, but thought you was alone, like me."

James North, thinking of Hank Fisher and the "mullater," could not help
intimating that his relations were very wealthy and fashionable people,
and had visited him last summer. A recollection of the manner in which
they had so visited him and his own reception of them prevented his
saying more. But Miss Bessy could not forego a certain feminine
curiosity, and asked,--

"Did they come with Sam Baker's team?"

"Yes."

"Last July?"

"Yes."

"And Sam drove the horses here for a bite?"

"I believe so."

"And them's your relations?"

"They are."

Miss Robinson reached over the cradle and enfolded the sleeping infant
in her powerful arms. Then she lifted her eyes, wrathful through her
still glittering tears, and said, slowly, "They
don't--have--this--child--then!"

"But why?"

"Oh, why? I saw them! That's why, and enough! You can't play any
such gay and festive skeletons on this poor baby for flesh and blood
parents. No, sir!"

"I think you judge them hastily, Miss Bessy," said North, secretly
amused; "my aunt may not, at first, favorably impress strangers, yet
she has many friends. But surely you do not object to my cousin Maria,
the young lady?"

"What! that dried cuttle-fish, with nothing livin' about her but her
eyes? James North, ye may be a fool like the old woman,--perhaps it's
in the family,--but ye ain't a devil, like that gal! That ends it."

And it did. North dispatched a second letter to Maria saying that he
had already made other arrangements for the baby. Pleased with her
easy victory, Miss Bessy became more than usually gracious, and the
next day bowed her shapely neck meekly to the yoke of her teacher, and
became a docile pupil. James North could not have helped noticing her
ready intelligence, even had he been less prejudiced in her favor than
he was fast becoming now. If he had found it pleasant before to be
admonished by her there was still more delicious flattery in her
perfect trust in his omniscient skill as a pilot over this unknown sea.
There was a certain enjoyment in guiding her hand over the
writing-book, that I fear he could not have obtained from an intellect
less graciously sustained by its physical natur