own
bedchamber. He was satisfied that he owed a duty to its unknown
parents to remove the child from the degrading influences of the barber
Kanaka, and Hank Fisher especially, and he resolved to write to his
relatives, stating the case, asking a home for the waif and assistance
to find its parents. He addressed this letter to his cousin Maria,
partly in consideration of the dramatic farewell of that young lady,
and its possible influence in turning her susceptible heart towards his
protege. He then quietly settled back to his old solitary habits, and
for a week left the Robinsons unvisited. The result was a morning call
by Trinidad Joe on the hermit. "It's a whim of my gal's, Mr. North,"
he said, dejectedly, "and ez I told you before and warned ye, when that
gal hez an idee, fower yoke of oxen and seving men can't drag it outer
her. She's got a idee o' larnin'--never hevin' hed much schoolin', and
we ony takin' the papers, permiskiss like--and she says YOU can teach
her--not hevin' anythin' else to do. Do ye folly me?"

"Yes," said North, "certainly."

"Well, she allows ez mebbee you're proud, and didn't like her takin'
care of the baby for nowt; and she reckons that ef you'll gin her some
book larnin', and get her to sling some fancy talk in fash'n'ble
style--why, she'll call it squar."

"You can tell her," said North, very honestly, "that I shall be only
too glad to help her in any way, without ever hoping to cancel my debt
of obligation to her."

"Then it's a go?" said the mystified Joe, with a desperate attempt to
convey the foregoing statement to his own intellect in three Saxon
words.

"It's a go," replied North, cheerfully.

And he felt relieved. For he was not quite satisfied with his own want
of frankness to her. But here was a way to pay off the debt he owed
her, and yet retain his own dignity. And now he could tell her what he
had done, and he trusted to the ambitious instinct that prompted her to
seek a better education to explain his reasons for it.

He saw her that evening and confessed all to her frankly. She kept her
head averted, but when she turned her blue eyes to him they were wet
with honest tears. North had a man's horror of a ready feminine
lachrymal gland; but it was not like Bessy to cry, and it meant
something; and then she did it in a large, goddess-like way, without
sniffling, or chocking, or getting her nose red, but rather with a
gentle deliquescence, a harmonious melt