Marcia sometimes went out to the Squire's office in the morning, carrying her baby with her, and propping her with law-books on a newspaper in the middle of the floor, while she dusted the shelves, or sat down for one of the desultory talks in the satisfactory silences which she had with her father. He usually found her there when he came up from the post-office, with the morning mail in the top of his hat: the last evening's Events,--which Bartley had said must pass for a letter from him when he did not write,--and a letter or a postal card from him. She read these, and gave her lather any news or message that Bartley sent; and then she sat down at his table to answer them. But one morning, after she had been at home nearly a month, she received a letter for which she postponed Bartley's postal. “It's from Olive Halleck!” she said, with a glance at the handwriting on the envelope; and she tore it open, and ran it through. “Yes, and they'll come here, any time I let them know. They've been at Niagara, and they've come down the St. Lawrence to Quebec, and they will be at North Conway the last of next week. Now, father, I want to do something for them!” she cried, feeling an American daughter's right to dispose of her father, and all his possessions, for the behoof of her friends at any time. “I want they should come to the house.” “Well, I guess there won't be any trouble about that, if you think they can put up with our way of living.' He smiled at her over his spectacles. “Our way of living! Put up with it! I should hope as much! They're just the kind of people that will put up with anything, because they've had everything. And because they're all as sweet and good as they can be. You don't know them, father, you don't half know them! Now, just get right away,”--she pushed him out of the chair he had taken at the table,--“and let me write to Bartley this instant. He's got to come when they're here, and I'll invite them to come over at once, before they get settled at North Conway.” He gave his dry chuckle to see her so fired with pleasure, and he enjoyed the ardor with which she drove him up out of his chair, and dashed off her letters. This was her old way; he would have liked the prospect of the Hallecks coming, because it made his girl so happy, if for nothing else. “Father, I will tell you about Ben Halleck,” she said, pounding her letter to Olive with the thick of her hand to make the envelope stick. “You know that lameness of his?” “Yes.”