Then something smote Christie’s heart.  “Stop!” she cried, and springing out ran back into the dismal room where the old man sat.  Straight up to him she went with outstretched hand, saying steadily, though her face was full of feeling: 

“Uncle, I’m not satisfied with that good-bye.  I don’t mean to be sentimental, but I do want to say, ‘Forgive me!’ I see now that I might have made you sorry to part with me, if I had tried to make you love me more.  It’s too late now, but I’m not too proud to confess when I’m wrong.  I want to part kindly; I ask your pardon; I thank you for all you’ve done for me, and I say good-bye affectionately now.”

Mr. Devon had a heart somewhere, though it seldom troubled him; but it did make itself felt when the girl looked at him with his dead sister’s eyes, and spoke in a tone whose unaccustomed tenderness was a reproach.

Conscience had pricked him more than once that week, and he was glad to own it now; his rough sense of honor was touched by her frank expression, and, as he answered, his hand was offered readily.

“I like that, Kitty, and think the better of you for’t.  Let bygones be bygones.  I gen’lly got as good as I give, and I guess I deserved some on’t.  I wish you wal, my girl, I heartily wish you wal, and hope you won’t forgit that the old house ain’t never shet aginst you.”

Christie astonished him with a cordial kiss; then bestowing another warm hug on Aunt Niobe, as she called the old lady in a tearful joke, she ran into the carriage, taking with her all the sunshine of the place.

Christie found Mrs. Flint a dreary woman, with “boarders” written all over her sour face and faded figure.  Butcher’s bills and house rent seemed to fill her eyes with sleepless anxiety; thriftless cooks and saucy housemaids to sharpen the tones of her shrill voice; and an incapable husband to burden her shoulders like a modern “Old man of the sea.”

A little room far up in the tall house was at the girl’s disposal for a reasonable sum, and she took possession, feeling very rich with the hundred dollars Uncle Enos gave her, and delightfully independent, with no milk-pans to scald; no heavy lover to elude; no humdrum district school to imprison her day after day.

For a week she enjoyed her liberty heartily, then set about finding something to do.  Her wish was to be a governess, that being the usual refuge for respectable girls who have a living to get.  But Christie soon found her want of accomplishments a barrier to success in that line, for the mammas thought less of the solid than of the ornamental branches, and wished their little darlings to learn French before English, music before grammar, and drawing before writing.