“And yet I remember to have heard how you hoped you might not be taken away from that convent life, and be compelled to enter the world,” said he, with a malicious twinkle of the eye. “True; and had I lived there still I had not asked for other. But how came it that you should have heard of me? I never heard of _you!_” “That is easily told. I was your aunt's guest at the time she resolved to come abroad to see you and fetch you home. I used to hear all her plans about you, so that at last--I blush to own--I talked of Josephine as though she were my sister.” “How strangely cold you were, then, when we met!” said she, quietly. “Was it that you found me so unlike what you expected?” “Unlike, indeed!” “Tell me how--tell me, I pray you, what you had pictured me.” “It was not mere fancy I drew from. There was a miniature of you as a child at the cottage, and I have looked at it till I could recall every line of it.” “Go on!” cried she, as he hesitated. “The child's face was very serious,--actually grave for childhood,--and had something almost stern in its expression; and yet I see nothing of this in yours.” “So that, like grandpapa,” said she, laughing, “you were disappointed in not finding me a young tiger from Bengal; but be patient, and remember how long it is since I left the jungle.” Sportively as the words were uttered, her eyes flashed and her cheek colored, and Conyers saw for the first time how she resembled her portrait in infancy. “Yes,” added she, as though answering what was passing in his mind, “you are thinking just like the sisters, 'What years and years it would take to discipline one of such a race!' I have heard that given as a reason for numberless inflictions. And now, all of a sudden, comes grandpapa to say, 'We love you so because you are one of us.' Can you understand this?” “I think I can,--that is, I think I can understand why--” he was going to add, “why they should love you;” but he stopped, ashamed of his own eagerness. She waited a moment for him to continue, and then, herself blushing, as though she had guessed his embarrassment, she turned away. “And this book that we have been forgetting,--let us go and search for it,” said she, walking on rapidly in front of him; but he was speedily at her side again. “Look there, brother Peter,--look there!” said Miss Dinah, as she pointed after them, “and see how well fitted we are to be guardians to a young lady!” “I see no harm in it, Dinah,--I protest, I see no harm in it.” “Possibly not, brother Peter, and it may only be a part of your system for making her--as you phrase it--feel a holy horror of the convent.” “Well,” said he, meditatively, “he seems a fine, frank-hearted young fellow, and in this world she is about to enter, her first experiences might easily be worse.” “I vow and declare,” cried she, warmly, “I believe it is your slipshod philosophy that makes me as severe as a holy inquisitor!”