very roar of cheering filled it, and the hemlock rafters rang. And I saw the colour fly to Lois’s face like a bright ensign breaking from its staff and opening in flower-like beauty.

Then every one must needs drink her health and praise her skill and wit and address — save I alone, who seemed to have no words for her, or even to tell myself of my astonishment at her accomplishment, somehow so unexpected.

Yet, why might I not have expected accomplishments from such a pliant intelligence — from a young and flexible mind that had not lacked schooling, irregular as it was? Far by her own confession to me, her education had been obtained, while it lasted, in schools as good as any in the land, if, indeed, all were as excellent as Mrs. Pardee’s Young Ladies’