“I cannot say no, but I have thought—­Mr. Benton has asked me the same question, and I hardly know what to say—­I said to him, ’If Emily is willing, I will not oppose your suit.’”

“Oh!” I cried, “father, he has told such stories!”

Louis said:  “We can explain that satisfactorily, Mr. Minot, but if there are other objections in your mind, let us know what they are.”

My father was not a man who expressed himself freely, and Louis was so unlike other young men that he was embarrassed evidently, and there was, as it seemed to me, a long silence ere he said: 

“I have no objections, Louis.  I believe you mean what you say, and also have enough of your mother in you to treat our girl well.  I cannot see why your plans may not be carried out so far as I am concerned.”

He looked at mother, who smiled a consent, and Louis stepped toward them both, shook their hands heartily, and said: 

“I thank you.”

His way of manifesting feeling was purely French, and belonged to him—­it was not ours, but we came to like it, and as my father often said, when Clara came she unlocked many a door that had been shut for years.  Too many of our best ideas were kept under covering, I knew, and the hand of expressive thought was one which loosened the soil about their roots, giving impetus to their growth and sweetness to their blossoms.  We knew more of each other daily, and is not this true through life?  Do not fathers and mothers live and die without knowing their children truly, and all of them looking through the years for that which they sorely need, and find it not?  Their confidence in each other lacking, lives have been blasted, hopes scattered almost ere they were born, and generations suffered in consequence.  It was the blessed breaking of day to me, the freedom to tell my mother what I thought; and after Clara, became one of us, I could get much nearer to my father.  The full tide of her feeling swept daily over the harbor bar of our lives, and we enjoyed together its great power.  Her heart was beneficent, and her hand sealed it with the alms she gave freely.  She was always unobtrusive, and anxious in every way to avoid notoriety.

Deacon Grover who had heard and known with others of her numerous charities, offered advice in that direction, and said to Aunt Hildy,

“If that rich lady would just walk up and give a few hundreds to the church fund it would help mightily.”

Aunt Hildy had replied: 

“Yes, yes, Deacon Grover, it would be nice for lazy folks to let the minister do all the saving, and somebody else all the paying.  I believe faith without works is jest exactly like heavy bread, and will not be accepted at the table of the Lord.”

“He never said another word to me,” said she; “that man knows he has a right to be better.”

This was a conceded fact, and it always seemed to me he ought not to be carrying his deaconship in one hand, and his miserably small deeds in the other.  Hypocrites were in existence among all people, and while thoroughly despised by them, still held their places, and do yet, as far as my knowledge and experience go.