ly substitutes a ball of yarn for the
uncertainties of a bird or a wind-blown leaf, and who may at any moment
ravel the fringe of a sacred curtain-tassel in preference to either.

Helena, with her mischievous appealing eyes, with her enchanting old
songs and her guitar, seemed the more delightful and even reasonable
because she was so kind to everybody, and because she was a beauty.
She had the gift of most charming manners. There was all the
unconscious lovely ease and grace that had come with the good breeding
of her city home, where many pleasant people came and went; she had no
fear, one had almost said no respect, of the individual, and she did
not need to think of herself. Cousin Harriet turned cold with
apprehension when she saw the minister coming in at the front gate, and
wondered in agony if Martha were properly attired to go to the door,
and would by any chance hear the knocker; it was Helena who, delighted
to have anything happen, ran to the door to welcome the Reverend Mr.
Crofton as if he were a congenial friend of her own age. She could
behave with more or less propriety during the stately first visit, and
even contrive to lighten it with modest mirth, and to extort the
confession that the guest had a tenor voice, though sadly out of
practice; but when the minister departed a little flattered, and hoping
that he had not expressed himself too strongly for a pastor upon the
poems of Emerson, and feeling the unusual stir of gallantry in his
proper heart, it was Helena who caught the honored hat of the late
Judge Pyne from its last resting-place in the hall, and holding it
securely in both hands, mimicked the minister's self-conscious
entrance. She copied his pompous and anxious expression in the dim
parlor in such delicious fashion that Miss Harriet, who could not
always extinguish a ready spark of the original sin of humor, laughed
aloud.

"My dear!" she exclaimed severely the next moment, "I am ashamed of
your being so disrespectful!" and then laughed again, and took the
affecting old hat and carried it back to its place.

"I would not have had any one else see you for the world," she said
sorrowfully as she returned, feeling quite self-possessed again, to the
parlor doorway; but Helena still sat in the minister's chair, with her
small feet placed as his stiff boots had been, and a copy of his solemn
expression before they came to speaking of Emerson and of the guitar.
"I wish I had asked him if he