with a beautiful
recklessness common to New England girls of that day, wearing her hat
drooping half down her neck, and baring her clear forehead to the
falling night-dews. Phil, with a pebble in his hand, makes a feint of
throwing into a flock of goslings that are waddling disturbedly after a
pair of staid old geese, but is arrested by Rose's prompt "Behave,
Phil!"

The Squire is reading his paper by the evening lamp, but cannot forbear
a greeting to Adele:--

"Ah, here we are again! and how is Madamoizel?" (this is the Squire's
style of French,)--"and has she brought me the peony? Phil would have
given his head for it,--eh, Phil?"

Rose is so bright, and glowing, and happy!

Mrs. Elderkin in her rocking-chair, with her gray hair carefully plaited
under the white lace cap whose broad strings fall on either shoulder, is
a picture of motherly dignity. Her pleasant "Good evening, Adele," would
alone have paid the warm-hearted exile for her walk.

Then follow games, chat, and an occasional noisy joke from the Squire,
until the nine o'clock town-bell gives warning, and Adele wends homeward
under convoy of the gallant Phil.

"Good night, Adele!"

"Good night, Phil!"

Only this at the gate. Then the Doctor's evening prayer; and after
it,--in the quiet chamber, where her sweet head lay upon the
pillow,--dreams. With recollections more barren than those of most of
her years, of any early home, Adele still dreamed as hopefully as any of
a home to come.

XXX.

In the autumn of 1836, Maverick wrote to his friend, the Doctor, that,
in view of the settled condition of business, he intended to visit
America some time in the course of the following season. He preferred,
however, that Adele should not be made acquainted with his expected
coming. He believed that it would be a pleasant surprise for his child;
nor did he wish her anticipations of his arrival to divert her from the
usual current of her study and every-day life.

"Above all," he writes, "I wish to see her as she is, without any note
of preparation. You will therefore, I beg, my dear Johns, keep from her
scrupulously all knowledge of my present intentions, (which may possibly
miscarry, after all,) and let me see, to the very finest touch, whether
of a ribbon or of a ringlet, how far you have New-Englandized my dear
girl. I form a hundred pictures in my fancy; but every new letter from
her somehow disturbs the old image, and another is conjured up. The only