in the heart.  But then, again, the matter had taken no definite or practical shape in his mind as yet, and things which in the abstract may wear an appearance of being highly desirable often put on quite a different look when presented in concrete form.  This would be especially the case with a man like Professor Valeyon, who was half a dreamer, and half a practical, common-sensible individual.  With Sophie, however, whose whole life was necessarily a tissue of delicate and high-wrought theories, there was no safeguard of the kind to be relied upon.

No more conversation was had upon the subject at that time.  The professor went down to his breakfast, and, having disposed of it with good appetite, and smoked his morning-pipe with quiet satisfaction, Michael brought Dolly and the wagon round to the front door, the old gentleman clambered in, and off they rattled to Abbie’s boarding-house.

This “Abbie,” as she was called in the village—­indeed, not more than one in a hundred knew her other name—­had long been an institution among the townspeople.  When she first became a resident was uncertain:  some said more, some less than twenty years ago.  Certain it was, at all events, that she had grown, during her sojourn there, from a young and comely, though sober-faced woman, to considerably more than middle age; though time had perhaps used her less kindly than most women in her situation in life, which is saying a good deal.  No one could tell where she came from, or what her previous life had been.  She had first made her appearance as purchaser of the house in which she had ever since lived, and kept boarders.  She was uncommunicative, without seeming offensively reserved; quietly tenacious of her rights, though far from grasping or aggressive, and was endowed with decided executive ability.  She had made a most unexceptionable landlady; one or two of her boarders had been with her almost since the inception of her enterprise; while all the better class of transient visitors to the village, which had a moderate popularity as a summer resort, made their first application for rooms to her.

Some ten or twelve years after her establishment, Professor Valeyon and his family had moved into town.  They had not taken up their quarters at Abbie’s, though she could easily have accommodated them, as far as room went; a circumstance which caused all the more surprise in some quarters, because there seemed to have been some previous acquaintance between herself and the professor.  But Abbie was even less talkative upon this than upon other subjects; and no one ventured to catechise the grave and forcible-looking man who was the only other source of possible information.  After a time, he settled in the house which subsequently became the parsonage; and, since no particular relations were kept up between his family and the boarding-house keeper, curiosity and comment died a natural death, and it even came to be doubted whether they ever had met each other before, after all.