false pretences; setting about an enterprise which may
succeed, possibly, but would succeed little to your advantage. Think
better of it and give it up! I am unselfish in saying that; for the
people please me. Life in their house, I can fancy, might be very
agreeable to me; but I am not seeking to marry them, and so there is no
violent forcing of incongruities into union and fellowship. Phil, you
cannot marry a Puritan."

How Mrs. Barclay was to initiate a system of higher education in this
farmhouse, she did not clearly see. Drawing was a simple thing enough;
but how was she to propose teaching languages, or suggest algebra, or
insist upon history? She must wait, and feel her way; and in the
meantime she scattered books about her room, books chosen with some
care, to act as baits; hoping so by and by to catch her fish. Meanwhile
she made herself very agreeable in the family; and that without any
particular exertion, which she rightly judged would hinder and not help
her object.

"Isn't she pleasant?" said Lois one evening, when the family were alone.

"She's elegant!" said Madge.

"She has plenty to say for herself," added Charity.

"But she don't look like a happy woman, Lois," Madge went on. "Her face
is regularly sad, when she ain't talking."

"But it's sweet when she is."

"I'll tell you what, girls," said Charity,--"she's a real proud woman."

"O Charity! nothing of the sort," cried Lois. "She is as kind as she
can be."

"Who said she wasn't? I said she was proud, and she is. She's a right,
for all I know; she ain't like our Shampuashuh people."

"She is a lady," said Lois.

"What do you mean by that, Lois?" Madge fired up. "You don't mean, I
hope, that the rest of us are not ladies, do you?"

"Not like her."

"Well, why should we be like her?"

"Because her ways are so beautiful. I should be glad to be like her.
She is just what you called her--elegant."

"Everybody has their own ways," said Madge.

"I hope none of you will be like her," said Mrs. Armadale gravely; "for
she's a woman of the world, and knows the world's ways, and she knows
nothin' else, poor thing!"

"But, grandmother," Lois put in, "some of the world's ways are good."

"Be they?" said the old lady. "I don' know which of 'em."

"Well, grandmother, this way of beautiful manners. They don't all have
it--I don't mean that--but some of them do. They seem to know exactly
how to behave to everybody, and always what to do or