ered
cautious. I myself gin her the receipt for the best mustard poultice
that ever drawed, and two pairs of clouded blue-and-white wool socks I
had knit on the way, and though it wuz a warm country she said they
would come handy when her patients had chills.

There wuz two young American girls at the hotel, and they happened to
come into the parlor while we wuz talkin' and they sent a big
present to the hospital. I guess they wuz real well off and good
dispositioned. They wuz travellin' alone and seemed to be havin' a
real good time. One on 'em wuz sunthin' of a invalid, but wuz
outdoors all day, I spoze tryin' to git well. They minded their
own bizness and didn't do any hurt so fur as I could see, but
Elder Wessel couldn't bear 'em. Sez he to me one day:

"I spoze they represent the new young woman?"

He said it real skornful, and Arvilly, who wuz present, took him up
real snappish. "Well, what of it? What have they done?" If that poor
man had said that black wuz black and white wuz white, Arvilly would
found fault with it.

"I don't object to what they have done," sez he, "so much as to what
they are. Young American women know too much." And Arvilly sez with a
meanin' glance at him, "That is sunthin' that everybody don't have to
stand."

She might just as well have called him a fool, her axent wuz such.
Arvilly is too hash. Sez he: "Now my Lucia is different. She knows
nothing about sin and wickedness, and I got this position for her, so
that as soon as she left the convent she was placed directly in the
care of this good woman and her little innocent child. What does she
know of sin or sorrow, or worldliness or vanity?"

"Or danger?" sez I meanin'ly. "If she always has some one at her side
to guard her, her perfect ignorance and innocence is a charm, but how
would it be in the hour of danger and temptation? Why should anybody
fear being burned if they had no knowledge of fire?"

"Oh," sez he, "her divine innocence is her safeguard. Evil would
retire abashed before the timid glance of her pure eyes."

"I hope so," sez I dryly. "I hope so. But I never knew the whiteness
of its wool to help a lamb if a wolfdog got after it. But mebby it
will in her case," sez I reasonably. "I don't want to break up your
happiness," sez I.

"You cannot," sez he dogmatically. "You cannot. I have brought up my
Lucia in the only right way for a young girl to be brought up. She has
been completely separated from young people of