rinder's manner seem large and
free. In her transit, however, the hostess was checked by the arrival of
fresh pilgrims; she had no idea she had mentioned the occasion to so
many people--she only remembered, as it were, those she had
forgotten--and it was certainly a proof of the interest felt in Mrs.
Farrinder's work. The people who had just come in were Doctor and Mrs.
Tarrant and their daughter Verena; he was a mesmeric healer and she was
of old Abolitionist stock. Miss Birdseye rested her dim, dry smile upon
the daughter, who was new to her, and it floated before her that she
would probably be remarkable as a genius; her parentage was an
implication of that. There was a genius for Miss Birdseye in every bush.
Selah Tarrant had effected wonderful cures; she knew so many people--if
they would only try him. His wife was a daughter of Abraham Greenstreet;
she had kept a runaway slave in her house for thirty days. That was
years before, when this girl must have been a child; but hadn't it
thrown a kind of rainbow over her cradle, and wouldn't she naturally
have some gift? The girl was very pretty, though she had red hair.

V

Mrs. Farrinder, meanwhile, was not eager to address the assembly. She
confessed as much to Olive Chancellor, with a smile which asked that a
temporary lapse of promptness might not be too harshly judged. She had
addressed so many assemblies, and she wanted to hear what other people
had to say. Miss Chancellor herself had thought so much on the vital
subject; would not she make a few remarks and give them some of her
experiences? How did the ladies on Beacon Street feel about the ballot?
Perhaps she could speak for _them_ more than for some others. That was a
branch of the question on which, it might be, the leaders had not
information enough; but they wanted to take in everything, and why
shouldn't Miss Chancellor just make that field her own? Mrs. Farrinder
spoke in the tone of one who took views so wide that they might easily,
at first, before you could see how she worked round, look almost
meretricious; she was conscious of a scope that exceeded the first
flight of your imagination. She urged upon her companion the idea of
labouring in the world of fashion, appeared to attribute to her familiar
relations with that mysterious realm, and wanted to know why she
shouldn't stir up some of her friends down there on the Mill-dam?

Olive Chancellor received this appeal with peculiar feelings. Wi