THY PEARSON. The childless wife of a Puritan settler in New
England. Her husband brings her home a boy whom he found crouching
under the gallows of his Quaker father, and she adopts him at once,
despite the opposition of "the congregation." A fortnight after he
entered the family, his own mother invades the pulpit of the Orthodox
meeting house, and delivers an anathema against her sect. Her boy
presses forward to meet her, but, after a conflict of emotions she
returns him to Dorothy. He submits, but pines for his mother through
the months that pass before her return with the news of religious
toleration. Dorothy's loving offices have smoothed the child's pathway
to the grave, and she hangs above him with tears of maternal grief as
he breathes his last in his mother's arms.--Nathaniel Hawthorne, _The
Gentle Boy_ (1851.)

_Dorothy Q_. Oliver Wendell Holmes's "grandmother's mother." Her
portrait taken at the age of "thirteen summers, or less," is the
subject of his lines, "_Dorothy Q._ A Family Portrait."

"O, Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q!
Strange is the gift that I owe to you;
Such a gift as never a king
Save to daughter or son might bring,--
All my tenure of heart and hand
All my title to house and land,
Mother and sister and child and wife
And joy and sorrow, and death and life!"

DORRILLON _(Sir William_), a rich Indian merchant and a widower. He
had one daughter, placed under the care of Mr. and Miss Norberry. When
this daughter (Maria) was grown to womanhood, Sir William returned
to England, and wishing to learn the character of Maria, presented
himself under the assumed name of Mr. Mandred. He found his daughter
a fashionable young lady, fond of pleasure, dress, and play, but
affectionate and good-hearted. He was enabled to extricate her from
some money difficulties, won her heart, revealed himself as her
father, and reclaimed her.

_Miss [Maria] Dorrillon_, daughter of Sir William; gay, fashionable,
light-hearted, accomplished, and very beautiful. "Brought up without
a mother's care or father's caution," she had some excuse for her
waywardness and frivolity. Sir George Evelyn was her admirer, whom for
a time she teased to the very top of her bent; then she married, loved
and reformed.--Mrs. Inchbald, _Wives as they Were and Maids as they
Are_ (1797).

D'OSBORN _(Count)_, governor of the Giant's Mount Fortress. The
countess Marie consented to marry him, because he promised to obtain
the acquit