everence.
She had read, in story books, of mysterious gentlemen who went about
doing good merely for the pleasure of it, and who always reached the
scene of distress with fairy-like certainty, when everybody and
everything would have gone to ruin without them. Such a strange,
supernatural embodiment of goodness seemed Marcus Wilkeson to her
childish fancy. When he entered the room--and he was an every-day caller
now--she looked around with great anxiety to see that all the chairs
were in their proper places; that there was no dirt or dust visible
anywhere; that everything was in a state of order and cleanliness worthy
so exalted a guest.

She would run to take his overcoat and hat and cane, and place them as
carefully in the clothes press as if they had been the robe, crown, and
sceptre of a king. Then she would sit in her little chair, and take her
sewing, or knitting, or embroidery, and pretend to be all absorbed in
it, while she was listening eagerly to every word that Marcus addressed
to her father, and occasionally looked up at the face of their guest,
and thought how noble it was, and how proud she should be to call
him uncle.

When he spoke to her, as he often did, and asked her about her work, or
her companions, or her studies (upon the latter subject he had grown
quite curious, of late), she would feel that she was blushing, and
answer, with downcast eyes, and be half glad and half sorry when he
ceased to question her, and would then sit and torment herself by
recalling what she had said, and thinking how much it might have
been improved.

A sharp-eyed observer, had such been present, accustomed to studying
the human face and weighing motives, would have been puzzled to guess
the exact nature of the feelings which Marcus entertained for the
pretty, innocent young creature who sat there, always plying her little
fingers at some useful work. The puzzle would have been a still greater
one for Mr. Wilkeson himself. He felt a profound interest in Pet; and
she it was, and not the pale mechanic or his novel machine, that led him
daily up those three flights of rickety stairs to that humble room. He
said to himself, and he would have said to anybody who was entitled to
call upon him for an explanation, that he had always loved children, and
that the beauty and goodness of this child had deeply interested him. If
there was any other motive at the bottom of his heart, he studiously
concealed it from himself, as he wo