etter, and it had relieved
her somehow. A gloomy presentiment of evil had been hanging over her for
many, many months past. She knew the worst now, and her darling boy was
come back to her repentant and tender-hearted. Did she want more?
All that the Rector could say (and his remarks were both dictated by
common-sense, and made respectable by antiquity) could not bring Helen
to feel any indignation or particular unhappiness, except that the boy
should be unhappy. What was this degree that they made such an outcry
about, and what good would it do Pen? Why did Doctor Portman and his
uncle insist upon sending the boy to a place where there was so much
temptation to be risked, and so little good to be won? Why didn't they
leave him at home with his mother? As for his debts, of course they must
be paid;--his debts!--wasn't his father's money all his, and hadn't he
a right to spend it? In this way the widow met the virtuous Doctor, and
all the arrows of his indignation somehow took no effect upon her gentle
bosom.

For some time past, an agreeable practice, known since times ever
so ancient, by which brothers and sisters are wont to exhibit their
affection towards one another, and in which Pen and his little sister
Laura had been accustomed to indulge pretty frequently in their childish
days, had been given up by the mutual consent of those two individuals.
Coming back from college after an absence from home of some months, in
place of the simple girl whom he had left behind him, Mr. Arthur found
a tall, slim, handsome young lady, to whom he could not somehow proffer
the kiss which he had been in the habit of administering previously, and
who received him with a gracious curtsey and a proffered hand, and with
a great blush which rose up to the cheek, just upon the very spot which
young Pen had been used to salute.

I am not good at descriptions of female beauty; and, indeed, do not care
for it in the least (thinking that goodness and virtue are, of course,
far more advantageous to a young lady than any mere fleeting charms of
person and face), and so shall not attempt any particular delineation
of Miss Laura Bell at the age of sixteen years. At that age she had
attained her present altitude of five feet four inches, so that she was
called tall and gawky by some, and a Maypole by others, of her own sex,
who prefer littler women. But if she was a Maypole, she had beautiful
roses about her head, and it is a fact that many swain