and mother was too wise
to _push_ him through college; but I think she was disappointed. He was
her only boy, and she would have chosen for him the profession of his
father and grandfather. Clara and I graduated in our white dresses and
blue ribbons, like other girls, and came home to mother, crochet-work,
and Tennyson. Just about here is the proper place to begin my story.

I mean that about here our old and long-tried cook, Bathsheba, who had
been an heirloom in the family, suddenly fell in love with the older
sexton, who had rung the passing-bell for every soul who died in the
village for forty years, and took it into her head to marry him, and
desert our kitchen for his little brown house under the hill.

So it came about that we hunted the township for a handmaiden; and it
also came about that our inquiring steps led us to the poor-house. A
stout, not over-brilliant-looking girl, about twelve years of age, was
to be had for her board and clothes, and such schooling as we could give
her,--in country fashion to be "bound out" till she should be eighteen.
The economy of the arrangement decided in her favor; for, in spite of
our grand descent and grander notions, we were poor enough, after father
died, and the education of three children had made no small gap in our
little principal, and she came.

Her name was a singular one,--Selphar. It always savored too nearly of
brimstone to please me. I used to call her Sel, "for short." She was a
good, sensible, uninteresting-looking girl, with broad face, large
features, and limp, tow-colored curls. They used to hang straight down
about her eyes, and were never otherwise than perfectly smooth. She
proved to be of good temper, which is worth quite as much as brains in a
servant, as honest as the daylight, dull enough at her books, but a
good, plodding worker, if you marked out every step of the way for her
beforehand. I do not think she would ever have discovered the laws of
gravitation; but she might have jumped off a precipice to prove them, if
she had been bidden.

Until she was seventeen, she was precisely like any other rather stupid
girl; never given to novel-reading or fancies; never, frightened by the
dark or ghost-stories; proving herself warmly attached to us, after a
while, and rousing in us, in return, the kindly interest naturally felt
for a faithful servant; but she was not in any respect _un_common,
--quite far from it,--except in the circumstance that she ne