but everybody made it up in smiling.  The nurse smiled, and the children held on to keep down a giggle within the lawful bounds of a smile; and the doctor looked rounder and calmer than ever; and the dog flapped his tail on the floor with a softened sound, as if he had fresh wrapped it in hair for that very day.  Aunt Toodie, the cook (so the children had changed Mrs. Sarah Good’s name), was blacker than ever and shinier than ever, and the coffee better, and the cream richer, and the broiled chickens juicier and more tender, and the biscuit whiter, and the corn-bread more brittle and sweet.

When the good doctor read the Scriptures at family prayer, the infection of silence had subdued everything except the clock.  Out of the wide hall could be heard in the stillness the old clock, that now lifted up its voice with unwonted emphasis, as if, unnoticed through the bustling week, Sunday was its vantage ground, to proclaim to mortals the swift flight of time.  And if the old pedant performed the task with something of an ostentatious precision, it was because in that house nothing else put on official airs, and the clock felt the responsibility of doing it for the whole mansion.

And now came mother and catechism; for Mrs. Wentworth followed the old custom, and declared that no child of hers should grow up without catechism.  Secretly, the doctor was quite willing, though openly he played off upon the practice a world of good-natured discouragement, and declared that there should be an opposition set up—­a catechism of Nature, with natural laws for decrees, and seasons for Providence, and flowers for graces!  The younger children were taught in simple catechism.  But Rose, having reached the mature age of twelve, was now manifesting her power over the Westminster Shorter Catechism; and as it was simply an achievement of memory and not of the understanding, she had the book at great advantage, and soon subdued every question and answer in it.  As much as possible, the doctor was kept aloof on such occasions.  His grave questions were not to edification, and often they caused Rose to stumble, and brought down sorely the exultation with which she rolled forth, “They that are effectually called do in this life partake of justification, adoption, sanctification, and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them.”

“What do those words mean, Rose?”

“Which words, pa?”

“Adoption, sanctification, and justification?”

Rose hesitated, and looked at her mother for rescue.

“Doctor, why do you trouble the child?  Of course she don’t know yet all the meaning.  But that will come to her when she grows older.”

“You make a nest of her memory, then, and put words there, like eggs, for future hatching?”

“Yes, that is it exactly:  birds do not hatch their eggs the minute they lay them.  They wait.”

“Laying eggs at twelve to be hatched at twenty is subjecting them to some risk, is it not?”