is mother, and he showed her the
daguerrotype of the girl he loved; and at last she confided to him her
anxieties for Betty's manners and the Governor's health, and her timid
wonder that the Bible "countenanced" slavery. She was rare and elegant like
a piece of fine point lace; her hands had known no harder work than the
delicate hemstitching, and her mind had never wandered over the nearer
hills.

As time went on, Betty was given over to the care of her governess, and she
was allowed to run wild no more in the meadows. Virginia, a pretty prim
little girl, already carried her prayer book in her hands when she drove to
church, and wore Swiss muslin frocks in the evenings; but Betty when she
was made to hem tablecloths on sunny mornings, would weep until her needle
rusted.

On cloudy days she would sometimes have her ambitions to be ladylike, and
once, when she had gone to a party in town and seen Virginia dancing while
she sat against the wall, she had come home to throw herself upon the
floor.

"It's not that I care for boys, mamma," she wailed, "for I despise them;
but they oughtn't to have let me sit against the wall. And none of them
asked me to dance--not even Dan."

"Why, you are nothing but a child, Betty," said Mrs. Ambler, in dismay.
"What on earth does it matter to you whether the boys notice you or not?"

"It doesn't," sobbed Betty; "but you wouldn't like to sit against the wall,
mamma."

"You can make them suffer for it six years hence, daughter," suggested the
Governor, revengefully.

"But suppose they don't have anything to do with me then," cried Betty, and
wept afresh.

In the end, it was Uncle Bill who brought her to her feet, and, in doing
so, he proved himself to be the philosopher that he was.

"I tell you what, Betty," he exclaimed, "if you get up and stop crying,
I'll give you fifty cents. I reckon fifty cents will make up for any boy,
eh?"

Betty lay still and looked up from the floor.

"I--I reckon a dol-lar m-i-g-h-t," she gasped, and caught a sob before it
burst out.

"Well, you get up and I'll give you a dollar. There ain't many boys worth
a dollar, I can tell you."

Betty got up and held out one hand as she wiped her eyes with the other.

"I shall never speak to a boy again," she declared, as she took the money.

That was when she was thirteen, and a year later Dan went away to college.

VI

COLLEGE DAYS

"My dear grandpa," wrote Dan during his first weeks at co