Several weeks have passed, and the old woman takes wonderfully to the new place. She begins to feel really glad for the change that was so terrible in the anticipation. It is so green and quiet all about the house—no rude boys shouting in her ear as she steps without the door, or throwing mud-balls into the open windows; no brazen, neglected girls to call her low names, or pin dirty rags upon her gown as she walks about the premises; and then every thing within the walls is so clean and nice—no threatening cracks in the white ceilings; no dilapidated walls to totter, or worn planks to shake at every tread; no half-starved rats, stalking about seeking somewhat to devour; and no odious effluvia from the waste lot, or the stagnant pond, stopping her breath as she looked from door or window. Oh! she could not have believed that any thing that seemed such an evil would prove so great a good. The breeze came into the clean rooms so laden with the breath of flowers, and the cheerful notes of birds were all the time in her ears; and in the quiet evening, she, and the boy, and his father could sit upon the sill of the door and talk to their heart's content, without one noisy interruption from the rude crowd, that used to make it so difficult to have one moment's pleasant intercourse. Archie was more cheerful, too, and took possession of his little chamber with such a manifest delight that his grandmother had nothing more to desire. His window looked out upon the old quarters, and he was thus enabled to contrast the beauty and the quiet with the sad unrest of his former home; and as he noticed the rough group so constantly upon the open space, and remembered how often he had been the butt of their unfeeling jests and cruel sport, he rejoiced at the high wall that prevented their ingress into his patron's territory, and felt as if he had indeed an impregnable fortress to resort to in every emergency.

It was just the spot for meditation, too, and the musty portfolio came forth oftener from its obscurity, and began to grow really bulky, and that not only in size but in matter.

Nobody would have thought him more than a common lad as he bent to weed the vegetables and flowers, or brushed down the white pony, or sauntered about the grounds with bowed head, and hands behind him; but Mrs. Fay had fathomed the secret depths, as from time to time she sought to draw him out from the reserve in which he was enveloped, and Kittie knew by her own pure and blessed instincts, all that there was of light and wisdom in the poor boy, who had attracted her from the very beginning. True, Cousin Willie would take every opportunity to disparage the lad, but what cared she? It is not so easy to bias the mind of a properly-taught child; and her own heart told her what was good in the boy and what was evil in her cousin. As for Willie, he walked about like some evil genius, making the deformity of the body more conspicuous by the deformity of the soul, and casting a huge and ugly shadow over the lovely home that God had so graciously given him. There was a constant antagonism between him and the poor lad; not that Archie ever gave occasion of offense, or encouraged the antipathy that he could perceive in Willie; but his patience, and gentleness, and intelligence, were a constant reproach to his rich young neighbor, who so continually wearied his friends by fretfulness and ill-humor, and who spurned all the efforts of his tutor, never trying to improve the privileges lavished upon him, but deeming it very hard that he should be expected to confine himself to books—"As if it were not punishment enough to carry about a repulsive body!" he would say.

Ah! quite enough. This Archie felt as he applied himself diligently to the task of adorning and embellishing his higher and imperishable nature. And the lady and the child had learned to look at that only, so that they really forgot often the outer man, as the soul-lit eyes sparkled and beamed upon them when they talked together. He did not forget it, and so it served its true purpose, making him humble, and keeping under the majesty of his spirit that might otherwise have grown into a revolting and self-sufficient pride. It is so vain to struggle against these fetters and restraints; God knows what we need, and it may be ever the mightiest souls that are curbed while on earth by some physical infirmity.