ot without
consolations unknown to the principal; and the waning afternoon, as it
lit up the conventional ugliness of the old church, and the
paraphernalia of its worship, relieved her emotional self-abandon with a
remote sense of content, so that it may have been a jealousy for the
integrity of her own revery, as well as a feeling for the poor woman,
that made her tremble lest Mr. Arbuton should in some way disparage the
spectacle. I suppose that her interest in it was more an aesthetic than
a spiritual one; it embodied to her sight many a scene of penitence that
had played before her fancy, and I do not know but she would have been
willing to have the suppliant guilty of some dreadful misdeed, rather
than eating meat last Friday, which was probably her sin. However it
was, the ancient crone before that ghastly idol was precious to her, and
it seemed too great a favor, when at last the suppliant wiped her eyes,
rose trembling from her knees, and approaching Kitty, stretched towards
her a shaking palm for charity.

It was a touch that transfigured all, and gave even Mr. Arbuton's
neutrality a light of ideal character. He bestowed the alms craved of
him in turn, he did not repulse the beldame's blessing; and Kitty, who
was already moved by his kindness to that poor mourner at the door,
forgot that the earlier part of their walk had been so miserable, and
climbed back to the Upper Town through the Prescott Gate in greater
gayety than she had yet known that day in his company. I think he had
not done much to make her cheerful; but it is one of the advantages of a
temperament like his, that very little is expected of it, and that it
can more easily than any other make the human heart glad; at the least
softening in it, the soul frolics with a craven lightsomeness. For this
reason Kitty was able to enjoy with novel satisfaction the
picturesqueness of Mountain Street, and they both admired the huge
shoulder of rock near the gate, with its poplars atop, and the battery
at the brink, with the muzzles of the guns thrust forward against the
sky. She could not move him to her pleasure in the grotesqueness of the
circus-bills plastered half-way up the rock; but he tolerated the levity
with which she commented on them, and her light sallies upon passing
things, and he said nothing to prevent her reaching home in serene
satisfaction.

"Well, Kitty," said the tenant of the sofa, as Kitty and the colonel
drew up to the table on which