fact is that we value Clementina rather highly, and we wish to be
sure that your hospitable offer will be for her real good."

"Of cou'se," said Mrs. Lander. "I should be just so myself abort her."

"I don't know," he continued, "that I've ever said how much we think of
her, Mrs. Richling and I, but this seems a good opportunity, as she is
not present.

"She is not perfect, but she comes as near being a thoroughly good girl
as she can without knowing it. She has a great deal of common-sense, and
we all want her to have the best chance."

"Well, that's just the way I feel about her, and that's just what I mean
to give her," said Mrs. Lander.

"I am not sure that I make myself quite clear," said the rector. "I
mean, a chance to prove how useful and helpful she can be. Do you think
you can make life hard for her occasionally? Can you be peevish and
exacting, and unreasonable? Can you do something to make her value
superfluity and luxury at their true worth?"

Mrs. Lander looked a little alarmed and a little offended. "I don't know
as I undastand what you mean, exactly," she said, frowning rather with
perplexity than resentment. "But the child sha'n't have a care, and her
own motha couldn't be betta to her than me. There a'n't anything money
can buy that she sha'n't have, if she wants it, and all I'll ask of her
is 't she'll enjoy herself as much as she knows how. I want her with me
because I should love to have her round; and we did from the very fust
minute she spoke, Mr. Lander and me, both. She shall have her own money,
and spend it for anything she pleases, and she needn't do a stitch o'
work from mohnin' till night. But if you're afraid I shall put upon
her."

"No, no," said the rector, and he threw back his head with a laugh.

When it was all arranged, a few days later, after the verification of
certain of Mrs. Lander's references by letters to Boston, he said to
Clementina's father and mother, "There's only one danger, now, and that
is that she will spoil Clementina; but there's a reasonable hope that
she won't know how." He found the Claxons struggling with a fresh
misgiving, which Claxon expressed. "The way I look at it is like this. I
don't want that woman should eva think Clem was after her money. On the
face of it there a'n't very much to her that would make anybody think
but what we was after it; and I should want it pootty well undastood
that we wa'n't that kind. But I don't seem to see any way of te