n in the richest silks of
those about me here,----gliding up the pathway that leads to the door
of the old parsonage; I can fancy you dropping a word of greeting to the
good Doctor within his study (he must be wearing spectacles now); and at
evening I seem to see you kneeling in the long back dining-room, as the
parson leads in family prayer. Well, well, don't forget to pray for your
old father, my child. I shall be all the safer for it, in what the
Doctor calls 'this wicked land.' And what of Reuben, whose mischief, you
told me, threatened such fearful results? Sobered down, I suppose, long
before this, wearing a stout jacket of homespun, driving home the 'keow'
at night, and singing in the choir of a Sunday. Don't lose your heart,
Adele, with any of the youngsters about you. I claim the whole of it;
and every day and every night mine beats for you, my child."

And Adele writes back:--

"My heart is all yours, papa,--only why do you never come and take it?
So many, many years that I have not seen you!

"Yes, I like Ashfield still; it is almost a home to me now, you know.
New Papa is very kind, but just as grave and stiff as at the first. I
know he loves me, but he never tells me so. I don't believe he ever told
Reuben so. But when I sing some song that he loves to hear, I see a
little quirk by his temple, and a glistening in his eye, as he thanks
me, that tells it plain enough; and most of all when he prays, as he
sometimes does after talking to me very gravely, with his arm tight
clasped around me, oh, I am sure that he loves me!--and indeed, and
indeed, I love him back again!

"It was funny what you said of Reuben; for you must know that he is
living in the city now, and happens upon us here sometimes with a very
grand air,--as fine, I dare say, as the people about Marseilles. But I
don't think I like him any better; I don't know if I like him as well.
Miss Eliza is, of course, very proud of him, as she always was."

As the nicer observing faculties of his child develop,--of which, ample
traces appear in her letters,--Maverick begs her to detail to him as
fully as she can all the little events of her every-day life. He has an
eagerness, which only an absent parent can feel, to know how his pet is
received by those about her; and would supply himself, so far as he may,
with a full picture of the scenes amid which his child is growing up.
Sheet after sheet of this simple, girlish narrative of hers Maverick
delight