rubbing the little creature down,—­much as a groom might have done, only with a loving touch not kept for horses,—­enduing it with a long night-gown, and toasting its shell-pink feet at the fire, till, between the luxury of ease and warmth and tending, “baby” cooed herself to sleep, and lay along Miss ’Viny’s lap like a petted kitten, the firelight playing soft lights over its fair head, sealed eyelids, and parted lips, tinting the relaxed arm and funny dimpled fist with a rosy glow, while Aunt ’Viny’s face took on a tender brooding gleam that nobody who had seen her in church on Sunday, severely crunching fennel, or looking daggers at naughty boys, could have believed possible.  But this expression is an odd wonder-worker.  I saw but the other day a bad-eyed, bronzed, “hard-favored” Yankee, with a head all angles, a dirty face, the air of a terrified calf, and the habiliments of a poor farmer; I looked at him aristocratically, and thanked the Lord for my mind, my person, and my manners, in true Pharisaic triumph,—­when his little blue-eyed daughter came round the corner and pulled at the tail of his ragged coat.  Why, the man was transfigured!  I wondered he was willing to shake hands with me when I left him; I knew before that his hands were brown and big and dirty, and mine were little and white and soap-scented; but I thought afterwards I’d as lief have been Peter as myself just then,—­and I think so still.  Wherefore, young ladies all, learn from this that the true cestus, fabled——­No!  I shall make an essay on that matter some day; I will not inflict it here.

So, by dint of hard work, Aunt ’Viny brought up her dead sister’s child in the way it should go, nor ever for one moment grudged her labor or her time.  Neither did she spoil Content by over-indulgence; her good sense kept the child unharmed, taught her hardy and self-reliant habits, made her useful all the time, and, even if Nature had not been beforehand with her, would have made her happy.  But ’Tenty had her father’s firm and sunny character; she never cried but for good reason, and then screamed lustily and was over with it; fretting was out of the question,—­she did not know how; her special faults were a strong will and a dogged obstinacy,—­faults Miss ’Viny trained, instead of eradicating; so that ’Tenty emerged from district-school into the “’Cademy’s” higher honors as healthy and happy an individual as ever arrived at the goodly age of fourteen without a silk dress or a French shoe to peacock herself withal.  Every morning, rain or shine, she carried her tin pail to Doctor Parker’s for milk, hung on the tea-kettle, set the table, wiped the dishes, weeded a bit of the prolific onion-bed, then washed her hands and brushed her hair, put on the green sun-bonnet or the blue hood, as the weather pleased, and trotted off to school, where she plodded over fractions, and wearied herself out with American history, and crammed geography, and wrote copies, for a whole year, when Aunt ’Viny thought she might learn her trade, being a stout girl of fifteen, and the ’Cademy knew her no more.