er-brilliant-looking girl, about twelve years of age, was
to be had for her board and clothes, and such schooling as we could give
her,--in country fashion, to be "bound out" till she should be eighteen.
The economy of the arrangement decided in her favor; for, in spite of
our grand descent and grander notions, we were poor enough, after father
died, and the education of three children had made no small gap in our
little principal, and she came.

Her name was a singular one,--Selphar. It always savored too nearly of
brimstone to please me. I used to call her Sel, "for short." She was a
good, sensible, uninteresting-looking girl, with broad face, large
features, and limp, tow-colored curls. I doubt if I ever see curls like
them now without a little shudder. They used to hang straight down about
her eyes, and were never otherwise than perfectly smooth. She proved to
be of good temper, which is worth quite as much as brains in a servant,
as honest as the daylight, dull enough at her books, but a good,
plodding worker, if you marked out every step of the way for her
beforehand. I do not think she would ever have discovered the laws of
gravitation; but she might have jumped off a precipice to prove them,
if she had been bidden.

Until she was seventeen, she was precisely like any other rather stupid
girl; never given to novel-reading or fancies; never frightened by the
dark or ghost-stories; proving herself warmly attached to us, after a
while, and rousing in us, in return, the kindly interest naturally
felt for a faithful servant; but she was not in any respect
_un_common,--quite far from it,--except in the circumstance that she
never told a falsehood.

At seventeen she had a violent attack of diphtheria, and her life hung
by a thread. Mother's aristocracy had nothing of that false pride which
is afraid of contamination from kindly association with its inferiors.
She was too thoroughly a lady. She was as tender and unwearying in her
care of Selphar as the girl's own mother might have been. She was
somehow touched by the child's orphaned life,--suffering always, in all
places, appealed to her so strongly,--every sorrow found so warm a place
in her heart.

From that time, I believe Sel was immovable in her faith in my mother's
divinity. Under such nursing as she had, she slowly recovered, but her
old, stolid strength never came back to her. Severe headaches became of
frequent occurrence. Her stout, muscular arms grew weak