ad nothing in common with the brisk
modern colonial engineer; yet still there was something curiously
recalling the expression of open honesty, and the whole cast of
countenance, as well as the individuality of voice, air, and gestures,
and the perception grew upon her so much in the haunts of her cousin,
where she saw his attitudes and habits unconsciously repeated, that she
was almost ready to accept Bertha's explanation that it was owing to the
influence of the Christian name that both shared. But as it had likewise
been borne by the wicked disinherited son who ran away, the theory was
somewhat halting.

Phoebe's intercourse with Humfrey the younger was much more fragmentary
than in town, and therefore, perhaps, the more delicious. She saw him on
most of the days of his fortnight's stay, either in the mutual calls of
the two houses, in chance meetings in the village, or in walks to or from
the holy-day services at the church, and these afforded many a moment in
which she was let into the deeper feelings that his first English
Christmas excited. It was not conventional Christmas weather, but warm
and moist, thus rendering the contrast still stronger with the sleighing
of his prosperous days, the snowshoe walk of his poorer ones. A frost
hard enough for skating was the prime desire of Maria and Bertha, who
both wanted to see the art practised by one to whom it was familiar. The
frost came at last, and became reasonably hard in the first week of the
new year, one day when Phoebe, to her regret, was forced to drive to
Elverslope to fulfil some commissions for Mervyn and Cecily, who were
expected at home on the 8th of January, after a Christmas at Sutton.

However, she had a reward. 'I do think,' said Miss Fennimore to her, as
she entered the drawing-room, 'that Mr. Randolf is the most good-natured
man in the world! For full three-quarters of an hour this afternoon did
he hand Maria up and down a slide on the pond at the Holt!'

'You went up to see him skate?'

'Yes; he was to teach Bertha. We found him helping the little Sandbrook
to slide, but when we came he sent him in with the little maid, and gave
Bertha a lesson, which did not last long, for she grew nervous. Really
her nerves will never be what they were! Then Maria begged for a slide,
and you know what any sort of monotonous bodily motion is to her; there
is no getting her to leave off, and I never saw anything like the spirit
and good-nature with wh