the world are well-meant--would hurt the feelings of the
gentle-conditioned girl. For a long time after, as often as Gibbie
entered the shop, Mysie left it and her mother came--a result
altogether as Mrs. Sclater would have had it. But hardly anybody
was ever in less danger of falling in love than Gibbie; and the
thing would not have been worth recording, but for the new direction
it caused in Mrs. Sclater's thoughts: measures, she judged, must be
taken.

Gladly as she would have centred Gibbie's boyish affections in
herself, she was too conscientious and experienced not to regard the
danger of any special effort in that direction, and began therefore
to cast about in her mind what could be done to protect him from one
at least of the natural consequences of his early familiarity with
things unseemly--exposure, namely, to the risk of forming low
alliances--the more imminent that it was much too late to attempt
any restriction of his liberty, so as to keep him from roaming the
city at his pleasure. Recalling what her husband had told her of
the odd meeting between the boy and a young lady at Miss Kimble's
school--some relation, she thought he had said--also the desire to
see her again which Gibbie, on more than one occasion, had shown,
she thought whether she could turn the acquaintance to account. She
did not much like Miss Kimble, chiefly because of her
affectations--which, by the way, were caricatures of her own; but
she knew her very well, and there was no reason why she should not
ask her to come and spend the evening, and bring two or three of the
elder girls with her: a little familiarity with the looks, manners,
and dress of refined girls of his own age, would be the best
antidote to his taste for low society, from that of bakers'
daughters downwards.

It was Mrs. Sclater's own doing that Gibbie had not again spoken to
Ginevra. Nowise abashed at the thought of the grenadier or her
array of doves, he would have gone, the very next day after meeting
them in the street, to call upon her: it was some good, he thought,
of being a rich instead of a poor boy, that, having lost thereby
those whom he loved best, he had come where he could at least see
Miss Galbraith; but Mrs. Sclater had pretended not to understand
where he wanted to go, and used other artifices besides--well-meant,
of course--to keep him to herself until she should better understand
him. After that he had seen Ginevra more than once at chur