pressions of gratitude from worthy Mrs. Hopkins for acts
of kindness to which he himself attached no great value. He had been
kind to her son Gifted; he had been fatherly with Susan Posey,
her relative and boarder; and he had shown himself singularly and
unexpectedly amiable with the little twins who had been adopted by
the good woman into her household. In fact, ever since these little
creatures had begun to toddle about and explode their first consonants,
he had looked through his great round spectacles upon them with a
decided interest; and from that time it seemed as if some of the human
and social sentiments which had never leafed or flowered in him, for
want of their natural sunshine, had begun growing up from roots which
had never lost their life. His liking for the twins may have been an
illustration of that singular law which old Dr. Hurlbut used to lay
down, namely, that at a certain period of life, say from fifty to
sixty and upward, the grand-paternal instinct awakens in bachelors, the
rhythms of Nature reaching them in spite of her defeated intentions;
so that when men marry late they love their autumn child with a twofold
affection,--father's and grandfather's both in one.

However this may be, there is no doubt that Mr. Byles Gridley was
beginning to take a part in his neighbors' welfare and misfortunes, such
as could hardly have been expected of a man so long lost in his books
and his scholastic duties. And among others, Myrtle Hazard had come in
for a share of his interest. He had met her now and then in her walks to
and from school and meeting, and had been taken with her beauty and her
apparent unconsciousness of it, which he attributed to the forlorn kind
of household in which she had grown up. He had got so far as to talk
with her now and then, and found himself puzzled, as well he might be,
in talking with a girl who had been growing into her early maturity in
antagonism with every influence that surrounded her.

"Love will reach her by and by," he said, "in spite of the dragons up at
the den yonder.

"'Centum fronte oculos, centum cervice gerebat
Argus, et hos unus saepe fefellit amor.'"

But there was something about Myrtle,--he hardly knew whether to call it
dignity, or pride, or reserve, or the mere habit of holding back
brought about by the system of repression under which she had been
educated,--which kept even the old Master of Arts at his distance. Yet
he was strongly drawn to