miles distant) this afternoon. Papa told me you had opened your school, and that the new mistress was come; and so I put on my bonnet after tea and ran up the valley to see her: this is she?" pointing to me.
"It is," said St. John.
"Do you think you shall like Morton?" she asked of me; with a direct and naive simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if child-like.
"I hope I shall. I have many inducements to do so."
"Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?"
"Quite."
"Do you like your house?"
"Very much."
"Have I furnished it nicely?"
"Very nicely indeed."
"And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood?"
"You have indeed. She is teachable and handy." (This, then, I thought, is Miss Oliver, the heiress: favoured, it seems, in the gifts fo fortune, as well as in those of nature! What happy combination of the planets presided over her birth, I wonder?)
"I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes" she added. "It will be a change for me
