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cheerily, higher and higher, in the summer dusk, he catches himself lending a profane ear; the blitheness, the sweetness, the mellowness of her tones win upon his dreary solitude; there is something softer in them than in the measured vocables of sister Eliza; it brings a souvenir of the girlish Rachel, and his memory floats back upon the strains of the new singer, to the days when that dear voice filled his heart; and he thinks--thanking Adaly for the thought--she is singing with the angels now! But the spinster, who has no ear for music, in the midst of such a carol, will cry out in sharp tones from her chamber, "Adele, Adele, not so loud, child! you will disturb the Doctor!" Even then Adele has her resource in the garden and the orchard, where she never tires of wandering up and down,--and never wandering there but some fragment of a song breaks from her lips. From time to time the Doctor summons her to his study to have serious talk with her. She has, indeed, shared the Saturday-night instruction in the Catechism, in company with Reuben, and being quick at words, no matter how long they may be, she has learned it all; and Reuben and she dash through "what is required" and "what is forbidden" and "the reasons annexed" like a pair of prancing horses, kept diligently in hand by that excellent whip, Miss Johns. But the study has not wrought that gravity in the mind of the child which the good parson had hoped for; the seed, he fears, has fallen upon stony places. He therefore, as we have said, summons her from time to time to his study. And Adele comes, always at the first summons, with a tripping step, and, with a little coquettish adjustment of her dress and hair, flings herself into the big chair before him,-- "Now, New Papa, here I am!" "Ah, Adaly! I wish, child, that you could be more serious than you are." "Serious! ha! ha!"--(she sees a look of pain on the face of the Doctor,) "but I will be,--I am"; and with great effort she throws a most unnatural expression of repose into her face. "You are a good girl, Adaly; but this is not the seriousness I want to find in you. I want you to feel, my child, that you are walking on the brink of a precipice,--that your heart is desperately wicked." "Oh, no, New Papa! you don't think I'm desperately wicked?"--and she says it with a charming eagerness of manner. "Yes, desperately wicked, Adaly,--leaning to the things of this world, and not fastening your
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