ng that hymn of a stormy
night, when father was out to sea. Both are dead now, and where am I?"

She turned round on the music stool, and banged out the accompaniment
of "_O pilot, 'tis a fearful night_," and sang it with great energy.
After her feelings were composed, she begged me to allow her to
teach me to sing. "You can at least learn the simple chords of
song accompaniments, and I think you have a voice that can be made
effective."

I promised to try, and as I had taken lessons before, in three months
I could play and sing "_Should those fond hopes e'er forsake thee_,"
tolerably well. But Mrs. Lane persisted in affirming that I had
a dramatic talent, and as she supposed that I never should be an
actress, I must bring it out in singing; so I persevered, and, thanks
to her, improved so much that people said, when I was mentioned, "She
sings."

The Moral Sciences went to Dr. Price, and he had a class of girls
in Latin; but my only opportunity of going before him was at morning
prayers and Wednesday afternoons, when we assembled in the hall to
hear orations in Latin, or translations, and "pieces" spoken by the
boys; and at the quarterly reviews, when he marched us backward and
forward through the books we had conned, like the sharp old gentleman
he was, notwithstanding his purblind eyes.

CHAPTER XVI.

I heard from home regularly; father, however, was my only
correspondent. He stipulated that I should write him every other
Saturday, if not more than a line; but I did more than that at first,
writing up the events of the fortnight, interspersing my opinions of
the actors engaged therein, and dwindling by degrees down to the mere
acknowledgment of his letter. He read without comment, but now and
then he asked me questions which puzzled me to answer.

"Do you like Mr. Morgeson?" he asked once.

"He is very attentive," I wrote back. "But so is Cousin Alice,--she is
fond of me."

"You do not like Morgeson?" again.

"Are there no agreeable young men," he asked another time, "with Dr.
Price?"

"Only boys," I wrote--"cubs of my own age."

Among the first letters I received was one with the news of the death
of my grandfather, John Morgeson. He had left ten thousand dollars
for Arthur, the sum to be withdrawn from the house of Locke Morgeson
& Co., and invested elsewhere, for the interest to accumulate, and
be added to the principal, till he should be of age. The rest of
his property he gave to the