n and unaccountable calamity, into which our
cheerful party had been entrapped without the liberty of choosing
whether to sympathize or no. Hollingsworth's behavior was certainly a
great deal more creditable than mine.

"Let us not pry further into her secrets," he said to Zenobia and the
rest of us, apart; and his dark, shaggy face looked really beautiful
with its expression of thoughtful benevolence. "Let us conclude that
Providence has sent her to us, as the first-fruits of the world, which
we have undertaken to make happier than we find it. Let us warm her
poor, shivering body with this good fire, and her poor, shivering heart
with our best kindness. Let us feed her, and make her one of us. As
we do by this friendless girl, so shall we prosper. And, in good time,
whatever is desirable for us to know will be melted out of her, as
inevitably as those tears which we see now."

"At least," remarked I, "you may tell us how and where you met with
her."

"An old man brought her to my lodgings," answered Hollingsworth, "and
begged me to convey her to Blithedale, where--so I understood him--she
had friends; and this is positively all I know about the matter."

Grim Silas Foster, all this while, had been busy at the supper-table,
pouring out his own tea and gulping it down with no more sense of its
exquisiteness than if it were a decoction of catnip; helping himself to
pieces of dipt toast on the flat of his knife blade, and dropping half
of it on the table-cloth; using the same serviceable implement to cut
slice after slice of ham; perpetrating terrible enormities with the
butter-plate; and in all other respects behaving less like a civilized
Christian than the worst kind of an ogre. Being by this time fully
gorged, he crowned his amiable exploits with a draught from the water
pitcher, and then favored us with his opinion about the business in
hand. And, certainly, though they proceeded out of an unwiped mouth,
his expressions did him honor.

"Give the girl a hot cup of tea and a thick slice of this first-rate
bacon," said Silas, like a sensible man as he was. "That's what she
wants. Let her stay with us as long as she likes, and help in the
kitchen, and take the cow-breath at milking time; and, in a week or
two, she'll begin to look like a creature of this world."

So we sat down again to supper, and Priscilla along with us.

V. UNTIL BEDTIME

Silas Foster, by the time we concluded our meal, had stript