and
ways, more accurately than any one else I ever knew. She had often done
it at my request the spring before; but this year she really gurgled,
and whistled, and warbled just as they did, out of the very fulness and
joy of her heart. She was more than ever the very apple of her father's
eye; her mother gave her both her own share of love, and that of the
dead child who had died in infancy. I have heard cousin Holman murmur,
after a long dreamy look at Phillis, and tell herself how like she was
growing to Johnnie, and soothe herself with plaintive inarticulate
sounds, and many gentle shakes of the head, for the aching sense of
loss she would never get over in this world. The old servants about the
place had the dumb loyal attachment to the child of the land, common to
most agricultural labourers; not often stirred into activity or
expression. My cousin Phillis was like a rose that had come to full
bloom on the sunny side of a lonely house, sheltered from storms. I
have read in some book of poetry,--

A maid whom there were none to praise, And very few to love.

And somehow those lines always reminded me of Phillis; yet they were
not true of her either. I never heard her praised; and out of her own
household there were very few to love her; but though no one spoke out
their approbation, she always did right in her parents' eyes out of her
natural simple goodness and wisdom. Holdsworth's name was never
mentioned between us when we were alone; but I had sent on his letters
to the minister, as I have said; and more than once he began to talk
about our absent friend, when he was smoking his pipe after the day's
work was done. Then Phillis hung her head a little over her work, and
listened in silence.

'I miss him more than I thought for; no offence to you, Paul. I said
once his company was like dram-drinking; that was before I knew him;
and perhaps I spoke in a spirit of judgment. To some men's minds
everything presents itself strongly, and they speak accordingly; and so
did he. And I thought in my vanity of censorship that his were not true
and sober words; they would not have been if I had used them, but they
were so to a man of his class of perceptions. I thought of the measure
with which I had been meting to him when Brother Robinson was here last
Thursday, and told me that a poor little quotation I was making from
the Georgics savoured of vain babbling and profane heathenism. He went
so far as to say that by learni