rday, expecting you, but I rode across the country
to carry a message from a sick mother to her daughter in service some
miles off, and have but just now returned. This is our young
church-keeper? You are not the less welcome, friend, for her sake, or
for this old man's; nor the worse teacher for having learnt humanity.'
'She has been ill, sir, very lately,' said the schoolmaster, in answer
to the look with which their visitor regarded Nell when he had kissed
her cheek.

'Yes, yes. I know she has,' he rejoined. 'There have been suffering
and heartache here.'

'Indeed there have, sir.'

The little old gentleman glanced at the grandfather, and back again at
the child, whose hand he took tenderly in his, and held.

'You will be happier here,' he said; 'we will try, at least, to make
you so. You have made great improvements here already. Are they the
work of your hands?'

'Yes, sir.'

'We may make some others--not better in themselves, but with better
means perhaps,' said the bachelor. 'Let us see now, let us see.'

Nell accompanied him into the other little rooms, and over both the
houses, in which he found various small comforts wanting, which he
engaged to supply from a certain collection of odds and ends he had at
home, and which must have been a very miscellaneous and extensive one,
as it comprehended the most opposite articles imaginable. They all
came, however, and came without loss of time; for the little old
gentleman, disappearing for some five or ten minutes, presently
returned, laden with old shelves, rugs, blankets, and other household
gear, and followed by a boy bearing a similar load. These being cast
on the floor in a promiscuous heap, yielded a quantity of occupation in
arranging, erecting, and putting away; the superintendence of which
task evidently afforded the old gentleman extreme delight, and engaged
him for some time with great briskness and activity. When nothing more
was left to be done, he charged the boy to run off and bring his
schoolmates to be marshalled before their new master, and solemnly
reviewed.

'As good a set of fellows, Marton, as you'd wish to see,' he said,
turning to the schoolmaster when the boy was gone; 'but I don't let 'em
know I think so. That wouldn't do, at all.'

The messenger soon returned at the head of a long row of urchins, great
and small, who, being confronted by the bachelor at the house door,
fell into various convulsions of politeness; clutch