“Oh yes; there is the look in your eye that I used to long to see in my poor aunt’s, but it never came.”

“Well, Miss Lucy, I can’t help it.  To think it is really you setting there by my fire!  I do feel like a cat with one kitten.  You should check me glaring you out o’ countenance like that.”

“Check you?  I could not bear to lose one glance of that honest tender eye.  I would not exchange one for all the flatteries of the world.  I am so happy here, so tranquil, under my nurse’s wing.”

With this declaration came a little sigh.

Mrs. Wilson caught it.  “Is there nothing wanting, dear?”

“No.”

“Well, I do keep wishing for one thing.”

“What is that?”

“Oh, I can’t help my thoughts.”

“But you can help keeping them from me, nurse.”

“Well, my dear, I am like a mother; I watch every word of yours and every look; and it is my belief you deceive yourself a bit:  many a young maid has done that.  I do judge there is a young man that is more to you than you think for.”

“Who on earth is that, nurse? " asked Lucy, coloring.

“The handsome young gentleman.”

“Oh, they are all handsome—­all my pests.”

“The one I found under your window, Miss Lucy; he wasn’t in liquor; so what was he there for? and you know you were not at your ease till you had made me go and wake him, and send him home; and you were all of a tremble.  I’m a widdy now, and can speak my mind to men-folk all one as women-folk; but I’ve been a maid, and I can mind how I was in those days.  Liking did use to whisper me to do so and so; Shyness up and said, ‘La! not for all the world; what’ll he think?’”

“Oh, nurse, do you believe me capable of loving one who does not love me?”

“No.  Who said he doesn’t love you?  What was he there for?  I stick to that.”

“Now, nurse, dear, be reasonable; if Mr. Dodd loved me, would he go to sleep in my presence?”

“Eh!  Miss Lucy, the poor soul was maybe asleep before you left your room.”

“It is all the same.  He slept while I stood close to him ever so long.  Slept while I—­ If I loved anybody as these gentlemen pretend they love us, should I sleep while the being I adored was close to me?”

“You are too hard upon him.  ’The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.’  Why, miss, we do read of Eutychus, how he snoozed off setting under Paul himself—­up in a windy—­and down a-tumbled.  But parson says it wasn’t that he didn’t love religion, or why should Paul make it his business to bring him to life again, ’stead of letting un lie for a warning to the sleepy-headed ones. ’’Twas a wearied body, not a heart cold to God,’ says our parson.”

“Now, nurse, I take you at your word.  If Eutychus had been Eutycha, and in love with St. Paul, Eutycha would never have gone to sleep, though St. Paul preached all day and all night; and if Dorcas had preached instead of St. Paul, and Eutychus been in love with her, he would never have gone to sleep, and you know it.”