“You speak of his gloveless hands.  I never saw a pair of kid gloves worn by farmers while we lived in Vermont or Pennsylvania; and certainly they would have been very inappropriate for a boy-farmer or a printer’s apprentice to wear; but brother was always, both at home and at Poultney, supplied with warm woollen mittens of mother’s knitting.  As for the cut of his trousers, I am surprised that any sensible author should use so unfit a word as ‘elegance’ in speaking of a poor farmer’s clothing.  I told you the other day that our wardrobe for every-day wear was spun, woven, and made by mother, and it is not to be expected that home-made coats and trousers should have the cut of a fashionable New York tailor; but they were, at all events, warm and comfortable.  That brother’s trousers were always short, and especially in one leg, is an absurd fabrication.  The story may perhaps have risen from some one who remembers his lameness in Poultney, when he acquired the habit of dragging one leg a little after the other, and that style of walking may have apparently shortened one of the trouser legs.  Have you anything else to ask, little one?”

“Yes, auntie,” said Gabrielle, smiling at mamma’s methodical way of answering:  “was papa an awkward boy, and did he eat vulgarly?”

“I have told you, dear,” mamma replied, “how we were brought up.  I never saw your papa eat ravenously while he was at home; for father was a despot at table, and any appearance of gluttony would have been quickly checked by the dreaded descent of his fork upon the table.  I think it probable that later in life, when your papa became a distinguished man, and every moment was of value, that he did eat quicker than was consistent with the laws of etiquette, but not when he was a boy.

“As for his awkwardness, I can readily imagine that a boy so intensely preoccupied would not appear in so favorable a light to strangers as one who should seek the society of people rather than books, and a superficial observer might have mistaken his air of abstraction for rustic bashfulness.  You know that he was always absorbed in a book from the time he was three years old.  Father would often send him to do an errand—­to fetch wood or the like; he would start very obediently, but with his eyes upon his book, and by the time he had reached the door he would have completely forgotten everything outside the page he was reading, and it was necessary to send some one after him to remind him of his errand.  He certainly was very unlike every-day boys, not only in appearance, but in habits and moral qualities.  Never did I hear a coarse or profane word pass his lips; the purity of his soul was radiant in his beautiful modest countenance; while his slender, boyish figure, with the ponderous white head poised upon his long, slim neck, always reminded me of a lovely, swaying lily.”

“I have seen recently in some book,” said Marguerite, “that uncle was never at his ease in polite society.  This I think very absurd.  To be sure he had not the manners of a dancing-master, but—­”