at Miss Millicent, as she sat in the mellow light of the purplish plate-glass of that superb parlor, she seemed so beautiful and queenly that he almost wished he had done it.  Was it quite fit that such a woman should be thrown away upon one of the mere beasts of the stock-market?  The air with which Chip took his victory was so exactly like that matter-of-course chuckle with which he would have tossed over the proceeds of a shrewd bargain into his bank-account, that the young lawyer’s soul was shocked at it, and he almost wished he had prevented such a shame.  However, his discretion came to the rescue, and told him he had done right in not linking his fortunes to a woman who, however beautiful, was too passive in her character to make any man positively happy.  Had it been his ambition to spend his life in burning incense to an exquisitely chiselled goddess, here was a chance, to be sure, where he could have done it on a salary that would have satisfied a pontifex maximus; but, with a fair share of the regard for money which characterizes his profession, Mr. Sterling never could make up his mind to become a suitor for the hand of Miss Millicent, nor get rid of the notion that he was to bless and be blessed by some woman of positive character and a taste for working out her own salvation in her own way,—­some woman who, not being made by her wealth, could not be unmade by the loss of it.  It was, therefore, only a momentary sense of choking he experienced, as he laid the manuscripts on the leaf of Mr. Hopkins’s chair, and said,—­

“Shall I ring the bell, Sir?”

“If you please, Mr. Sterling.  Now, Millicent, dear, whose name shall have the honor of standing as witness on this document?  There is Aunt Peggy,—­is good at using pothooks, but not so good at making them.  Her mark won’t exactly do.”

“Why, father!  I shall, of course, have my little favorite, Lucy Green; her signature will be perfectly beautiful.  And by the way, Mr. Dartmouth, here is a thing I haven’t thought of before.  With this Lucy of mine for an attendant, I am worth about twice as much as I should have been without her, and yet no mention has been made of this in the bargain.”

“Ha! ha!” said Chip.  “Thought of in good time.  Let Mr. Sterling add the item at once.  I am content.”

“First, however, you shall see the good girl herself, Mr. Dartmouth, and then we can have a postscript—­or should I say a codicil?—­on her account.  John, please say to Lucy, I wish her to come to me.  After all the stocks and bonds in the world, Mr. Dartmouth, our lives are what our servants please to make them.”

“True, indeed, my love; but the comfort is, if we are well stocked with bonds of the right sort, servants that don’t suit can be changed for those that do.”

“And the more changes, the worse, commonly;—­an exception is so rare, I dread nothing like change.  The chance of improving a bad one is even better, I think.”