“I declare,” Mrs. Gaylord went on, “it worked me up considerable to have her come in some those times, and see by her face 't she'd seen him with some the other girls. She used to _look_ so! And then I'd hear her up in her room, cryin' and cryin'. I shouldn't cared so much, if Marcia'd been like any other girl, kind of flirty, like, about it. But she wa' n't. She was just bowed down before her idol.” A final assent came from the Squire, as if wrung out of his heart, and he rose from his chair, and then sat down again. Marcia was his child, and he loved her with his whole soul. “M-well!” he deeply sighed, “all that part's over, anyway,” but he tingled in an anguish of sympathy with what she had suffered. “You see, Miranda, how she looked at me when she first came in with him,--so proud and independent, poor girl! and yet as if she was afraid I _mightn't_ like it?” “Yes, I see it.” He pulled his hat far down over his cavernous eyes, and worked his thin, rusty old jaws. “I hope 't she'll be able to school herself, so 's t' not show out her feelings so much,” said Mrs. Gaylord. “I wish she could school herself so as to not have 'em so much; but I guess she'll have 'em, and I guess she'll show 'em out.” They were both silent; after a while he added, throwing at the stove a minute fragment of the cane he had pulled off the seat of his chair: “Miranda, I've expected something of this sort a good while, and I've thought over what Bartley had better do.” Mrs. Gaylord stooped forward and picked up the bit of wood which her husband had thrown down; her vigilance was rewarded by finding a thread on the oil-cloth near where it lay; she whipped this round her finger, and her husband continued: “He'd better give up his paper and go into the law. He 's done well in the paper, and he's a smart writer; but editing a newspaper aint any work for a _man_. It's all well enough as long as he's single, but when he's got a wife to look after, he'd better get down to _work_. My business is in just such a shape now that I could hand it over to him in a lump; but come to wait a year or two longer, and this young man and that one 'll eat into it, and it won't be the same thing at all. I shall want Bartley to push right along, and get admitted at once. He can do it, fast enough. He's bright enough,” added the old man, with a certain grimness. “M-well!” he broke out, with a quick sigh, after a moment of musing; “it hasn't happened at any very bad time. I was just thinking, this morning, that I should like to have my whole time, pretty soon, to look after my property. I sha'n't want Bartley to do _that_ for me. I'll give him a good start in money and in business; but I'll look after my property myself. I'll speak to him, the first chance I get.”