though, under Tira’s vigorous rule, no task or duty could be safely shunned or slighted, she proved a kind and even an indulgent mistress to those who showed themselves worthy of her favor.  Old Violet, the mother of Dinah, the little black girl elsewhere mentioned, yielded at once to Tira Blake the same respectful obedience that she and her ancestors, for more than a century in due succession, had been wont to render only to dames of the ancient Bugbee line.  Dinah herself, now a well-grown damsel, black, but comely, who, during Cornelia’s maladministration, had been suffered to follow too much the devices and desires of her own heart, setting at naught alike the entreaties and reproofs of her mistress and her mother’s angry scoldings,—­even Dinah submitted without a murmur to Tira’s wholesome authority, and abandoned all her evil courses.  Bildad Royce, a crotchety hired-man, whom the Doctor kept to do the chores and till the garden, albeit at first inclined to be captious, accorded to the new housekeeper the meed of his approbation.

“I like her well enough to hope she’ll stay, mum,” quoth he, in reply to an inquisitive neighbor.  “And for my part, Miss Prouty,” he added, nodding and winking at his questioner, “I’d like to see it fixed so she’d alwus stay; and if the Doctor doos think he can’t do no better’n to have her bimeby, when the time comes, who’s a right to say a word agin it?”

“Goodness me!” exclaimed the unwary Mrs. Prouty,—­“do you mean to say you think he’s got any idea of such a thing, Bildad?”

“Yes, I don’t mean to say I think he’s got any idee of sich a thing, Bildad,” replied Bildad himself, who took great delight in mystifying people, and who sometimes, in order to express the most unqualified negation, was accustomed to employ this apparently ambiguous form of speech.  “I said for my part, Miss Prouty,—­for my part.  As for the Doctor, he’ll prob’bly have his own notions, and foller ’em.”

Besides these already mentioned, there was another person, who sat so often at the Doctor’s board and spent so many hours beneath his roof, that, for the nonce, I shall reckon her among his family.  Indeed, Laura Stebbins was almost as much at home in the Bugbee mansion as at the parsonage, and she used to regard the Doctor and his wife with an affection quite filial in kind and very ardent in degree.  For this she had abundant reason, the good couple always treating her with the utmost kindness, frequently making her presents of clothes and things which she needed, besides gifts of less use and value.  These tokens of her friends’ good-will she used to receive with many sprightly demonstrations of thankfulness; sometimes, in her transports of gratitude, distributing between the Doctor and his wife a number of delicious kisses, and telling the latter that her husband was the best and most generous of men.  After Mrs. Bugbee’s death, the Doctor’s manner, as was to be expected, became more grave and sober, and