nce which seems to me to grow out of
your old-fashioned New England training."

"That is all," said the Doctor, quietly folding the letter. "What do you
think of the proposal, Eliza?"

"I like it, Benjamin."

The spinster was a woman of quick decision. Had it been proposed to
receive an ordinary pupil in the house for any pecuniary consideration,
her pride would have revolted on the instant. But here was a child of an
old friend of the Doctor, a little Christian waif, as it were, floating
toward them from that unbelieving world of France.

"Surely it will be a worthy and an honorable task for Benjamin" (so
thought Miss Eliza) "to redeem this little creature from its graceless
fortune; possibly, too, the companionship may soften that wild boy,
Reuben. This French girl, Adele, is rich, well-born; what if, from being
inmates of the same house, the two should come by-and-by to be joined by
some tenderer tie?"

The possibility, even, of such a dawn of sentiment under the spinster's
watchful tutelage was a delightful subject of reflection to her. It is
remarkable how even the cunningest and the coolest of practical-minded
women delight in watching the growth of sentiment in others,--and all
the more strongly, if they can foster it by their artifices and provoke
it into demonstration.

Miss Johns, too, without being imaginative, prefigured in her mind the
image of the little French stranger, with foreign air and dress,
tripping beside her up the meeting-house aisle, looking into her face
confidingly for guidance, attracting the attention of the simple
townspeople in such sort that a distinction would belong to her
_protegee_ which would be pleasantly reflected upon herself. A love of
distinction was the spinster's prevailing sin,--a distinction growing
out of the working of good deeds, if it might be, but at any rate some
worthy and notable distinction. The Doctorate of her good brother, his
occasional discourses which had been subject of a public mention that
she never forgot, were objects of a more than sisterly fondness. If her
sins were ever to meet with a punishment in the flesh, they would know
no sharper one than in a humiliation of her pride.

"I think," said she, "that you can hardly decline the proposal of Mr.
Maverick, Benjamin."

"And you will take the home care of her?" asked the Doctor.

"Certainly. She would at first, I suppose, attend school with Reuben and
the young Elderkins?"

"Probably," return