sterday
they expressed themselves highly satisfied with the general
improvement in him, and he said he could hardly help laughing as Miss
Martha added, 'And you seem to have quite shaken off that little habit
of affectation which--you'll excuse me, dear John--you had as a boy.'
He says that, to the best of his belief, his only approach to
affectation consisted in his being rather absent and ungainly, and in
a strong aversion from Mr. Brooke.'

"'Did the old gentleman wear that frightful shade in his time?' I
asked.

"'Not always,' he says, 'but he looked worse without it. He told me a
good deal about him that I had never heard. He remembered hearing it
spoken of as a boy. It appears that the brother was very wild and
extravagant in his youth; drank, too, I fancy, and gave his poor
sisters a world of trouble, after breaking the heart of the widowed
mother who had spoiled him. When she died the sisters lived together,
and never faltered in their efforts to save him--never shut their
doors against him when he would return--and paid his debts over and
over again. He spent all his own fortune, and most of theirs, besides
being the means of breaking off comfortable marriages for both. Mr.
Smith thinks that a long illness checked his career, and eventually he
reformed.'

"'I hope he was grateful to his poor sisters,' I said.

"'One naturally thinks that he must have been so, but Smith's remark
was very just. He said, "I fancy he was both penitent and grateful as
far as he was able, but I believe he had been too long accustomed to
their unqualified self-sacrifice to feel it very sensitively!" And I
believe he is right. Such men not seldom reform in conduct if they
live long enough, but few eyes that have been blinded by years of
selfishness are opened to see clearly in this world.'

"'It ought to make one very tender with the good ladies' little
weaknesses,' I said, self-reproachfully; and I walked home in a more
peaceful state of mind. I forgave poor Miss Martha; also I was
secretly satisfied that my father had found the merchant's
conversation attractive. It seemed to give me some excuse for my
breach of Miss Peckham's golden rule. Moreover, little troubles and
offences which seemed mountains at Bellevue Cottage were apt to
dwindle into very surmountable molehills with my larger-minded
parents. I was comparatively at ease again. My father had evidently
seen nothing unusual in my conduct, so I hoped that it had not been