ago."

"People seem to advance and then fall back. They emigrate and cannot
take all their appliances with them, and they make simpler things to use
until they have leisure and begin to accumulate wealth. You see, they
could not bring a great deal from England or Holland in the vessels they
had in early sixteen hundred. So they had to begin at the foundation in
many things."

"It is all so wonderful when you really come to learn about it," she
said with a gentle sigh.

The blaze was shining on her now, and bringing out the puzzles on the
fair child's face. She was very intelligent, if she was slow at figures.

"Doris,"--after a long pause,--"how would you like to live here?"

"Oh, Uncle Win, it would be the most splendid thing----"

"I fancied you might like to change. And there are some matters
connected with your education--why, what is it, Doris?"

She raised her eyes an instant, then they drooped and he saw the dark
fringe beaded with tears. She took a long quivering inspiration.

"Uncle Win--I don't believe I can." The words came very slowly. "You see
Betty is away, and Uncle Leverett missed me very much. He said the other
night I was his little girl, and he was lonesome----"

"I shall be lonesome when you are gone."

"But you have so many books and things, and people coming, and--I should
like to stay. Oh, I do like you so." She put her slim arm around his
neck and laid her cheek against his. "Sometimes it seems as if you were
like what I remember of papa. I only saw such a little of him, you know,
after I went to England. But Aunt Elizabeth says it is the hard things
that are right always. She would have Jimmie boy, you know, if I stayed,
but Uncle Leverett wants me. I can just feel how it is, but I don't know
how to explain it. He has always been so good to me. And that day on the
ship he said, 'Is this my little girl?' and I was so glad to really
belong to someone again----"

She was crying softly. He felt the tears on his cheek. Her simple
heroism touched him.

"Yes, dear," he said with a comforting sound in his voice. "Perhaps it
would be best to wait a little, until Betty returns, or in the summer.
You can come over Friday night and spend Sunday, and brush up on Latin,
and brush me up on French, and we will have a nice visit."

"Oh, thank you, thank you. Uncle Win--if I could be two little
girls----"

"I want you all, complete. We will keep it to think about."

Then Miss Recompense said sup