disturbed him almost as much as the
stiff garniture in which he had been invested by the solicitude of Miss
Eliza; and when, in addition to his double embarrassment, a little
saucy-eyed, brown-faced girl, full of mirthful exuberance, with her dark
hair banded in a way that was utterly strange to him, and with
coquettish bows of ribbon at her throat, at either armlet of her jaunty
frock, and all down either side of her silk pinafore, came toward him
with a smiling air, as if she were confident of his caresses, the
awkwardness of the poor Doctor was complete.

But, catching sight of a certain frank outlook in the little face which
reminded him of his friend Maverick, he felt his heart stirred within
him, and in his grave way dropped a kiss upon her forehead, while he
took both her hands in his.

"This, then, is little Adaly?"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Adele, merrily, and, turning round to her new-found
friends, says,--"My new papa calls me Adaly!"

The straightforward parson was, indeed, as inaccessible to French words
as to French principles. Adele had somehow a smack in it of the Gallic
Pandemonium: Adaly, to his ear, was a far honester sound.

And the child seemed to fancy it,--whether for its novelty, or the
kindliness that beamed on her from the gravest face she had ever seen,
it would be hard to say.

"Call me Adaly, and I will call you New Papa," said she.

And though the parson was not a bargaining man, every impulse of his
heart went to confirm this arrangement. It was flattering to his
self-love, if not to his principles, to have apparent sanction to his
prejudices against French forms of speech; and the "New Papa" on the
lips of this young girl touched him to the quick. Wifeless men are more
easily accessible to demonstrations of even apparent affection on the
part of young girls than those whose sympathies are hedged about by
matrimonial relations.

From all this it chanced that the best possible understanding was
speedily established between the Doctor and his little ward from beyond
the seas. For an hour after his arrival, the little creature hung upon
his chair, asking questions about her new home, about the schools, about
her playmates, patting the great hand of the Doctor with her little
fingers, and reminding him sadly of days utterly gone.

Mrs. Brindlock, with her woman's curiosity, seizes an occasion, before
they leave, to say privately to the Doctor,--

"Benjamin, the child must have a strange