"Oh, yes! and she liked it very much, for she is very excitable and very fond of praise. Besides, she has a very bright soul, and she was pleased with the sparkling scenery. As she described it, 'It was all roses, and crystal, and beautiful music going round and round.' She is a sweet little child when you really know her, and as innocent as the two little daughters of the clergyman at St. Anthony's who go every day past hand in hand, with their white foreheads and blue eyes, and whose mamma sleeps by Laura's, in the same churchyard. Well, she came to me several times, and at last I persuaded her papa to let her drink tea with me, and it saves him trouble, so he is very glad she should. It is the end of the season now, so I hope he will give her a real holiday, and she will get quite strong." "He fetches her, then, to go to the theatre?" "Yes; it is not any trouble to him, for he calls on another person in this lane, and they all go together." "Do you know that person?" "Oh, no! and Laura does not like her. But as Laura is obliged to see a good deal of low people, I like her sometimes to see high people, that her higher nature may not want food." "I understand. Was that the reason she joined the class?" "I persuaded her papa to allow her, by assuring him it would improve her voice for singing in the chorus; and now he comes himself, though I rather suspect it is because he likes to know all that is going on in the town." "She goes home with him, then?" "Yes. The reason you saw Laura in her dancing-dress was that you might like her. I bade her bring it, and put it on her myself. I did not tell her why, but I wished you to see her too." "But why did you wish me to like her, Miss Benette?" "As I told you before,--that you may be kind to her; and also that she might see some one very gentle, I wished her to be here with you." "Am I gentle, do you consider?" "I think you are a young gentleman," she answered, with her sweet gravity. "But I do not see how it could do her good exactly to see gentle persons." "Do not you? I do; I believe she will never become ungentle by living with ungentle persons, as she does and must, if she once knows what gentle persons are. I may be all wrong, but this is what I believe; and when Laura grows up, I shall find out whether I am right. Oh! it is good to love the beautiful; and if we once really love it, we can surely not do harm." "Miss Benette!" I exclaimed suddenly,--I really could not help it,--"I think you are an angel." She raised her blue eyes from the shadowy length of their lashes, and fixed them upon the dim gray autumn heaven, then without a smile; but her bright face shining even with the light of which smiles are born, she replied in the words of Mignon, but with how apart a significance! "I wish I were one!" then going on, "because then I shall be all beautiful without and within me. But yet, no! I would not be an angel, for I could not then sing in our class!"