ung associates was one who had been as a brother to her
childhood. He was her mother's cousin's son,--and so, by a sort of
family immunity, had always a free access to her mother's house. He took
to the sea, as the most bold and resolute young men will, and brought
home from foreign parts those new modes of speech, those other eyes for
received opinions and established things, which so often shock
established prejudices,--so that he was held as little better than an
infidel and a castaway by the stricter religious circles in his native
place. Mary's mother, now that Mary was grown up to woman's estate,
looked with a severe eye on her cousin. She warned her daughter against
too free an association with him,--and so----We all know what comes to
pass when girls are constantly warned not to think of a man. The most
conscientious and obedient little person in the world, Mary resolved to
be very careful. She never would think of James, except, of course, in
her prayers; but as these were constant, it may easily be seen it was
not easy to forget him.

All that was so often told her of his carelessness, his trifling, his
contempt of orthodox opinions, and his startling and bold expressions,
only wrote his name deeper in her heart,--for was not his soul in peril?
Could she look in his frank, joyous fate and listen to his thoughtless
laugh, and then think that a fall from mast-head, or one night's storm,
might----Ah, with what images her faith filled the blank! Could she
believe all this and forget him?

You see, instead of getting our tea ready, as we promised at the
beginning of this chapter, we have filled it with descriptions and
meditations, and now we foresee that the next chapter will be equally
far from the point. But have patience with us; for we can write only as
we are driven, and never know exactly where we are going to land.

CHAPTER III.

A quiet, maiden-like place was Mary's little room. The window looked out
under the overarching boughs of a thick apple-orchard, now all in a
blush with blossoms and pink-tipped buds, and the light came
golden-green, strained through flickering leaves,--and an ever-gentle
rustle and whirr of branches and blossoms, a chitter of birds, and an
indefinite whispering motion, as the long heads of orchard-grass nodded
and bowed to each other under the trees, seemed to give the room the
quiet hush of some little side-chapel in a cathedral, where green and
golden glass softens the sunl