ould
permit), and stay with her for a while.

It was known now that Mrs. Harold was to have charge of Garda. The
Gracias friends were grieved by this tidings; they had supposed that
Garda would be left to them. But they all liked Margaret, and when, a
little later, they learned that she had asked Dr. Kirby to fill the
office of guardian, they welcomed with gladness this guarantee that they
were not to be entirely separated from the child whom they had known and
loved from her birth, that one of them was to have the right, in some
degree, to direct her course, and watch over her. These unworldly
people, these secluded people, with their innocently proud, calm belief
in their own importance, never once thought of its being possibly an
advantage to Garda, this opportunity to leave Gracias-a-Dios, to have
further instruction, to see something of the world. They could not
consider it an advantage to leave Gracias-a-Dios, and "further
instruction," which, of course, meant northern instruction, they did not
approve; as for "the world," very little confidence had they in any
world so remote from their own. That, indeed, was the Gracias idea of
New York--"remote." Nor did the fact that Mrs. Harold had a fortune (a
very large one it would have seemed to them had they known its amount)
make any especial impression. They would each and all have welcomed
Garda to their own homes, would have freely given her a daughter's share
in everything they possessed; that, from a worldly point of view, these
homes were but poor ones, and a daughter's share in incomes which were
in themselves so small and uncertain, a very limited possession--these
considerations did not enter much into their thoughts. Their idea was
that for a fatherless, motherless girl, love was the great thing; and of
love they had an abundance.

Before he had had his interview with Margaret, before he knew of her
intention to ask him to be guardian, Dr. Kirby had gone about silent;
with a high color; portentous. Much as he admired Mrs. Rutherford, he
did not present himself at the eyrie; his mirror told him that he had
not the proper expression. But Margaret did not delay; on the third day
she made her request; and then the Doctor went home stepping with all
his old trimness, his toes well turned out, his head erect.

"It's very fortunate, ma" (the Doctor's _a_ in this word had a sound
between that of _a_ in "mare" and in "May"), "that she _has_ asked me,"
he said to his