There certainly were no indications of poverty in Uncle Silas's
room; and he said impressively--

'Remember that book; in it your father placed his trust, in it he found his
reward, in it lives my only hope; consult it, my beloved niece, day and
night, as the oracle of life.'

Then he laid his thin hand on my head, and blessed me, and then kissed my
forehead.

'No--a!' exclaimed Cousin Milly's lusty voice. I had quite forgotten her
presence, and looked at her with a little start. She was seated on a very
high old-fashioned chair; she had palpably been asleep; her round eyes were
blinking and staring glassily at us; and her white legs and navvy boots
were dangling in the air.

'Have you anything to remark about Noah?' enquired her father, with a
polite inclination and an ironical interest.

'No--a,' she repeated in the same blunt accents; 'I didn't snore; did I?
No--a.'

The old man smiled and shrugged a little at me--it was the smile of
disgust.

'Good night, my dear Maud;' and turning to her, he said, with a peculiar
gentle sharpness, 'Had not you better wake, my dear, and try whether your
cousin would like some supper?'

So he accompanied us to the door, outside which we found L'Amour's candle
awaiting us.

'I'm awful afraid of the Governor, I am. Did I snore that time?'

'No, dear; at least, I did not hear it,' I said, unable to repress a smile.

'Well, if I didn't, I was awful near it,' she said, reflectively.

We found poor Mary Quince dozing over the fire; but we soon had tea and
other good things, of which Milly partook with a wonderful appetite.

'I _was_ in a qualm about it,' said Milly, who by this time was quite
herself again. 'When he spies me a-napping, maybe he don't fetch me a prod
with his pencil-case over the head. Odd! girl, it _is_ sore.'

When I contrasted the refined and fluent old gentleman whom I had just
left, with this amazing specimen of young ladyhood, I grew sceptical almost
as to the possibility of her being his child.

I was to learn, however, how little she had, I won't say of his society,
but even of his presence--that she had no domestic companion of the least
pretensions to education--that she ran wild about the place--never, except
in church, so much as saw a person of that rank to which she was born--and
that the little she knew of reading and writing had been picked up, in
desultory half-hours, from a person who did not care a pin about her
manners or decorum, and