of a girl like me! Very few men would stand
it at all, Mr. Roll; but Mr. Falkirk never said a rough word
to me in his life.'

She was so grave, so innocent, so ignorant in it all, the
effect was indescribably funny.

'I should think very few men would stand it,' said Rollo,
composedly; but Primrose and her father smiled.

'Mr. Falkirk is an admirable man,' said Dr. Maryland. 'You are
a good witness for him, Hazel.'

'If I would only do all he wants me to!' she said with a
slight shake of the head. 'But I cannot, and he says I don't
know what I want. But Dr. Maryland--all the nice, proper people
I have ever seen, live on such a dead level--it would kill me.
They think dancing is wrong, and Italian a loss of time, and
"it's a pity to waste my young years upon German." And they
can't talk of a book, but some life of a missionary who was
eaten by cannibals,--I was very sorry he went there, to be
sure, but that didn't make me want to hear about it, nor to go
myself. They are just like peach trees trimmed up and nailed
to a wall, and I'd rather be wild Wych Hazel in the woods,
though it's of no sort of use, and nobody cares for it!' Dr.
Maryland might guess from this frank out-pouring, how seldom
it was that the stream of young thoughts found such an exit,
how complete was the trust which called it forth. She had
quite forgotten her tea. And the doctor forgot his; and bent
his gray head towards her brown one.

'But suppose, my dear,' (how different this from Mr. Falkirk's
'my dear,')--'suppose the bush were a conscious thing; and
suppose that while it remained in the woods and remained
entirely itself, it could yet by being submitted to some sweet
influence be made so fragrant that its influence should be
known all through the forest; and its nuts, instead of being
wild, useless things, should every one of them bring a gift of
healing or of life to the hands that should gather them? I
would rather it should stay in the woods;--and I never think
anything trained against a wall is as good as that which has
the sun all round it.'

Wych Hazel looked at him with no sort of doubt in her eyes
that he had been "submitted to some sweet influence." And
perhaps it was the image he had drawn, that brought a little
tremour round her lips, as she answered:

'I do not want to be a wild, bitter, useless thing,--maybe that
is what Mr. Falkirk is afraid of, too.'

'I believe,' said Dr. Maryland, 'that He who made all the
variet