his actions is of no use to me. You are dismissed."

CHAPTER XX.

AN OUTBURST.

"I saw the new moon late yestreen,
Wi' the auld moon in her arm."

"Miss Marvin, does 'yestreen' mean 'last night'?"

"It does."

"Then I wish the fellow would say 'last night,'" grumbled Master Calvin.
"And how could the new moon have the old moon in her arm?"

Hester explained.

"But moons haven't arms." He pushed the book away pettishly.
"I hate this poetry! Why can't you teach me what I want?"

"That," said Hester, "is just what I am trying to discover.
Will you tell me what you want?"

To her amazement, he bent his head down upon his arms and broke into
sobbing. "I don't know what I want! Everyone hates me, and I--I hate it
all!"

Somehow, Hester--who had started by misliking the child, and only with the
gravest misgivings (yielding to pressure from his father) had consented to
teach him in her spare hours--was beginning to pity him. This new
feeling, to be sure, suffered from severe and constant checks; for he was
unamiable to the last degree, and seldom awoke a spark of liking but he
killed it again, and within five minutes, by doing or saying something
odious. He differed from other children, and differed unpleasantly.
He had taken the full tinge of his sanctimonious upbringing; he was
pharisaical, cruel at times, incurably twisted by his father's creed that
wrong becomes right when committed by a pious person from pious motives.
(His mother had once destroyed a cat because she found herself growing
fond of it and believed that a Christian's soul must be weaned of all
earthly affections.) He appealed to Hester's pity because, with all this,
he was unhappy.

She had been teaching him languidly and inattentively to-day, being
preoccupied with a letter in her pocket; and to this letter, having set
him to learn his verses from Sir Patrick Spens, she let her thoughts
wander. It ran:--

"My dear Miss Marvin,--After much hesitation I have decided to
commit to writing a proposal which has been ripening in my mind
during our three months' acquaintance. My age and my
convictions alike disincline me to set too much store on the
emotion men call 'love,' which in my experience is illusory as
the attractions provoking it are superficial. But as a solitary
man I have long sighed for the blessings of Christian
companionship, or a union founded on mutual esteem and fru