oul shrank within her, as she
recollected all the compromises and defeats of the week before. It
seemed to her that Mrs. Kittridge saw it all,--how she had ingloriously
bought peace with gingerbread, instead of maintaining it by rightful
authority,--how young master had sat up till nine o'clock on divers
occasions, and even kept little Mara up for his lordly pleasure.

How she trembled at every movement of the child in the pew, dreading
some patent and open impropriety which should bring scandal on her
government! This was the more to be feared, as the first effort to
initiate the youthful neophyte in the decorums of the sanctuary had
proved anything but a success,--insomuch that Zephaniah Pennel had been
obliged to carry him out from the church; therefore, poor Mrs. Pennel
was thankful every Sunday when she got her little charge home without
any distinct scandal and breach of the peace.

But, after all, he was such a handsome and engaging little wretch,
attracting all eyes wherever he went, and so full of saucy drolleries,
that it seemed to Mrs. Pennel that everything and everybody conspired to
help her spoil him. There are two classes of human beings in this world:
one class seem made to give love, and the other to take it. Now Mrs.
Pennel and Mara belonged to the first class, and little Master Moses to
the latter.

It was, perhaps, of service to the little girl to give to her delicate,
shrinking, highly nervous organization the constant support of a
companion so courageous, so richly blooded, and highly vitalized as the
boy seemed to be. There was a fervid, tropical richness in his air that
gave one a sense of warmth in looking at him, and made his Oriental name
seem in good-keeping. He seemed an exotic that might have waked up under
fervid Egyptian suns, and been found cradled among the lotus blossoms of
old Nile; and the fair golden-haired girl seemed to be gladdened by his
companionship, as if he supplied an element of vital warmth to her
being. She seemed to incline toward him as naturally as a needle to a
magnet.

The child's quickness of ear and the facility with which he picked up
English were marvelous to observe. Evidently, he had been somewhat
accustomed to the sound of it before, for there dropped out of his
vocabulary, after he began to speak, phrases which would seem to betoken
a longer familiarity with its idioms than could be equally accounted for
by his present experience. Though the English evide