wn throughout the house.

At night, Esther, who has a chamber near him, creeps in to say
good-night to the lad, and asks,--

"Do you like her, Ruby, boy? Do you like your Aunt Eliza?"

"I d'n know," says Reuben, "She says she likes good boys; don't you like
bad uns, Esther?"

"But you're not _very_ bad," says Esther, whose orthodoxy does not
forbid kindly praise.

"Didn't mamma like bad uns, Esther?"

"Dear heart!" and the good creature gives the boy a great hug; it could
not have been warmer, if he had been her child.

The household speedily felt the presence of the new comer. Her
precision, her method, her clear, sharp voice,--never raised in anger,
never falling to tenderness,--ruled the establishment. Under all the
cheeriness of the old management, there had been a sad lack of any
economic system, by reason of which the minister was constantly
overrunning his little stipend, and making awkward appeals from time to
time to the Parish Committee for advances. A small legacy that had
befallen the late Mrs. Johns, and which had gone to the purchase of the
parsonage, had brought relief at a very perplexing crisis; but against
all similar troubles Miss Johns set her face most resolutely. There was
a daily examination of butchers' and grocers' accounts, that had been
previously unknown to the household. The kitchen was placed under strict
regimen, into the observance of which the good Esther slipped, not so
much from love of it, as from total inability to cope with the magnetic
authority of the new mistress. Nor was she harsh in her manner of
command.

"Esther, my good woman, it will be best, I think, to have breakfast a
little more promptly,--at half past six, we will say,--so that prayers
may be over and the room free by eight; the minister, you know, must
have his morning in his study undisturbed."

"Yes, Marm," says Esther; and she would as soon have thought of flying
over the house-top in her short gown as of questioning the plan.

Again, the mistress says,--"Larkin, I think it would be well to take up
those scattered bunches of lilies, and place them upon either side of
the walk in the garden, so that the flowers may be all together."

"Yes, Marm," says Larkin.

And much as he had loved the little woman now sleeping in her grave, who
had scattered flowers with an errant fancy, he would have thought it
preposterous to object to an order so calmly spoken, so evidently
intended for execution. There was som