e all been boys," said Mrs. Chaffin, "since Hetty was born."

I thought it strange that the H in her daughter's name was the only one
that the good woman had shown the ability to manage.

"Hetty is the only one of the lot that takes to books," she continued.
"The head master told me she will make a good scholar, and dear a me!
she does nothing but read books from mornin' till night." While Hetty
and her mother removed the dishes we drew our chairs about the fire,
and Mr. Chaffin, a blunt, simple-minded man, entertained me with sage
observations regarding politics and the weather. He spoke rather loudly,
and in a key which, as I learned afterward, he only employed on very
special occasions. Presently the youngest lad in the family, who sat
on his father's knee, demanded a song. The response was prompt and
generous. The selection with which Mr. Chaffin favored us contained
upward of forty stanzas, relating the unhappy story of a fair maid and
a bold sailor, both of whom met a tragic death, in the last stanza, just
before the day set for their marriage. The song being finished, Hetty
and her mother drew their chairs up to the fire; Hetty sat next me,
and after a severe inward struggle I summoned the courage to ask her a
question. She answered me in the fewest words possible, but in a
voice so sweet and low that I wondered then and often afterward at
its contrast to the other voices I had heard in that house. She wore a
home-spun frock and a neat white pinafore, set off with a dainty ribbon
tied about her throat.

"She's uncommon still when strangers is here, sir," said Mrs. Chaffin;
"but law me! she goes rompitin' about the house like as if she was crazy
sometimes, ticklin' her father and tryin' t' snip off his beard with the
scissors."

That night was the beginning of happier days for me. When at last I
rose to go it was near midnight. I forgot my weariness as I walked to my
lodgings, thinking of those simple, honest people and of their kindness
to me.

I enjoyed high jinks at the house of the Chaffins at least once a week
during the next year of my apprenticeship, near the close of which
I began to get ready for a visit to my stepmother in fulfilment of a
promise I had made by letter. It had been, on the whole, a happy year to
me. I had known many lonely hours, to be sure, but those visits to the
little old weather-stained house, in which I found my first friends
after leaving home, cheered me from week to week. I k