as
his disposition, indeed, to be indulgent to women, to give them all the
homage and sympathy they require.

Mr. Phipps and Mr. Carnegie quitted the rectory-garden, and crossed the
road to the doctor's house in company. Bessie Fairfax, worn out with the
emotions and fatigues of the day, had left the children to their mother
and stout Irish nurse, and had collapsed into her father's great chair
in the parlor. She sprang up as the gentlemen entered, and was about to
run away, when Mr. Phipps spread out his arms to arrest her flight.

"Well, Cinderella, the pumpkin-coach has not come yet to fetch you
away?" said he. The application of the parable of Cinderella to her case
was Mr. Phipps's favorite joke against Bessie Fairfax.

"No, but it is on the road. I hear the roll of the wheels and the crack
of Raton's whip," said she with a prodigious sigh.

"So it is, Phipps--that's true! We are going to lose our Bessie," said
Mr. Carnegie, drawing her upon his knee as he sat down.

"Poor little tomboy! A nice name Mrs. Wiley has fitted her with! And she
is going to be a lady? I should not wonder if she liked it," said Mr.
Phipps.

"As if ladies were not tomboys too!" said she with wise scorn, half
laughing, half pouting. Then with wistfulness: "Will it be so very
different? Why should it? I hate the idea of going away from
Beechhurst!" and she laid her cheek against the doctor's rough whisker
with the caressing, confiding affection that made her so inexpressibly
dear to him.

"Here is my big baby," said he. "A little more, and she will persuade me
to say I won't part with her."

Bessie flashed out impetuously: "Do say so! do say so! If you won't part
with me, I won't go. Who can make us?"

Mrs. Carnegie came into the room, serious and reasonable. She had caught
Bessie's last words, and said: "If we were to let you have your own way
now, Bessie dear, ten to one that you would live to reproach us with not
having done our duty by you. My conscience is clear that we ought to
give you up. What is your opinion, Mr. Phipps?"

"My opinion is, Mrs. Carnegie, that when the pumpkin-coach calls for
Cinderella, she will jump in, kiss her hand to all friends in the
Forest, and drive off to Woldshire in a delicious commotion of tearful
joy and impossible expectation."

Bessie cried out vehemently against this.

"There, there!" said the doctor, as if he were tired, "that is enough.
Let us proclaim a truce. I forbid the subject to