a little in advance, came rapidly up the walk, and the
older woman greeted her with the words:

"My dear, I have seen him!"

"Yes, he just passed us at the corner, and I wondered if you were
looking. Do tell us what you think of him."

She sat down in a low chair by the teacher's side, while Virginia went
over to the cage and stood gazing thoughtfully at the singing bird.

"Well, I don't think his nose spoils him," replied Miss Priscilla after
a minute, "but there's something foreign looking about him, and I hope
Cyrus isn't thinking seriously about putting him into the bank."

"That was the first thing that occurred to father," answered Susan, "but
Oliver told me last night while we were unpacking his books--he has a
quantity of books and he kept them even when he had to sell his
clothes--that he didn't see to save his life how he was going to stand
it."

"Stand what?" inquired Miss Priscilla, a trifle tartly, for after the
vicissitudes of her life it was but natural that she should hesitate to
regard so stable an institution as the Dinwiddie Bank as something to be
"stood." "Why, I thought a young man couldn't do better than get a place
in the bank. Jinny's father was telling me in the market last Saturday
that he wanted his nephew John Henry to start right in there if they
could find room for him."

"Oh, of course, it's just what John Henry would like," said Virginia,
speaking for the first time.

"Then if it's good enough for John Henry, it's good enough for Oliver, I
reckon," rejoined Miss Priscilla. "Anybody who has mixed with beggars
oughtn't to turn up his nose at a respectable bank."

"But he says it's because the bank is so respectable that he doesn't
think he could stand it," answered Susan.

Virginia, who had been looking with her rapt gaze down the deserted
street, quivered at the words as if they had stabbed her.

"But he wants to be a writer, Susan," she protested. "A great many very
nice people are writers."

"Then why doesn't he go about it in a proper way, if he isn't ashamed of
it?" asked the teacher, and she added reflectively after a pause, "I
wish he'd write a good history of the war--one that doesn't deal so much
with the North. I've almost had to stop teaching United States history
because there is hardly one written now that I would let come inside my
doors."

"He doesn't want to write histories," replied Susan. "Father suggested
to him at supper last night that if he would try h