“Well, he is a classmate with whom I have long wished to get better acquainted; but he is so shy and retiring that I have made little progress.  He came from another seminary, and entered our class in this the middle year.  No one seems to know much about him; and indeed he has shunned all intimacies and devotes himself wholly to his books.  The recitation-room is the one place where he appears well—­for there he speaks out, as if forgetting himself, or rather, losing himself in some truth under contemplation.  Sometimes he will ask a question that wakes up both class and professor; but at other times it seems difficult to pierce the shell of his reserve or diffidence.  And yet, from little things I have seen, I know that he has a good warm heart; and the working of his mind in the recitation-room fascinates me.  Further than this I know little about him, but have just learned, from his explanation as to his unexpected appearance at our door, that he is very poor, and purposed to spend his holiday vacation as agent for a new magazine that is offering liberal premiums.  I think his poverty is one of the reasons why he has so shrunk from companionship with the other students.  He thinks he ought to go out and continue his efforts tonight.”

“This stormy night!” ejaculated kind Mrs. Alford.  “It would be barbarous.”

“Certainly it would, mother.  We must not let him.  But you must all be considerate, for he seems excessively diffident and sensitive; and besides—­but no matter.”

“No fear but that we will soon make him at home.  And it’s a pleasure to entertain people who are not surfeited with attention.  I don’t understand Elsie, however, for she seems to have formed a violent prejudice against him.  From the nature of her announcement of his presence I gathered that he was a rather forward young man.”

There was a twinkle in George’s eye; but he merely said: 

“Elsie is full of moods and tenses; but her kind little heart is always the same, and that will bring her around all right.”

They were soon after marshalled to the supper-room.  Elsie slipped in among the others, but was so stately and demure, and with her curls brushed down so straight that you would scarcely have known her.  Her father caught his pet around the waist, and was about to introduce her, when George hastened to say with the solemnity of an undertaker that Elsie and Mr. Stanhope had met before.

Elsie repented the promise she had wrung from her brother, for any amount of badinage would be better than this depressing formality.  She took her seat, not daring to look at the obnoxious guest; and the family noticed with surprise that they had never seen the little maiden so quenched and abashed before.  But George good-naturedly tried to make the conversation general, so as to give them time to recover themselves.

Elsie soon ventured to steal shy looks at Mr. Stanhope, and with her usual quickness discovered that he was more in terror of her than she of him, and she exulted in the fact.