“I’ve laid the silver out there on the dining-room table. You might clean it. Here, let me put this apron on you.” And abruptly abandoning the cushions, the speaker hurried into the dining-room, divided from the living-room only by an imaginary line, and seizing an enveloping gingham apron, concealed Mrs. Bruce’s trim China silk from head to foot. The mistress sat down at the table and opened the silver-polish, and Betsy returned to her work. “I’ve been asking Captain Salter about the neighbors, and especially about my little protégée.” “Which one? Oh, you mean Mrs. Pogram’s girl!” “Yes, Rosalie Vincent. With that name and her pretty face and graceful figure, it did seem too bad that she shouldn’t have her chance. I remember, though, you didn’t altogether approve of my sending her away from washing Mrs. Pogram’s dishes.” “Washin’ Mrs. Pogram’s dishes was real safe,” returned Betsy. “Rosalie was pretty, and poor, and young; and that’s a combination that had better stay right in the home village under some good woman’s wing. Mrs. Pogram’s a clever soul, though some like putty. If she hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have spared Rosalie, I s’pose.” “Oh, it wasn’t for long,” replied Mrs. Bruce. “I thought it only fair that the child should have one season’s course in English, with such a yearning as she had after poetry and all things poetical. Such a doom as it seemed to be to peel Mrs. Pogram’s vegetables and wash her dishes. I can always discern an artist,” added Mrs. Bruce complacently, “even in the most unlikely places; and that girl had a touch of the divine fire. I recognized it that day when she recited the bit of Browning up here.” Betsy’s eyes happening to fall on the silver-polish, she remarked dryly. “Well, whitin’ ’s safer than Brownin’ for her sort, and I thought she was contented enough.” Betsy’s two-year-old disapproval of this one of her mistress’s undertakings revived. Education was a good thing, without doubt, but according to Betsy’s judgment it was best, under circumstances of such dependence as existed with Mrs. Pogram’s pretty adopted child, to let well enough alone. Mrs. Pogram’s principal motive in giving the girl a home had been the material help she could render, and it was a doubtful experiment to send her to the new environment of the city, and the novel companionship of her fellow students, unless her benefactress intended to prolong her watch over the young girl’s fortunes; and this Betsy knew would not be the case; for long before Rosalie’s term of study was ended, Mrs. Bruce’s energies would be directed toward superintending the affairs of somebody else. The girl’s grateful letters had begun to be ignored some time before Mrs. Bruce joined her adored boy in Europe; and it is doubtful when she would have thought again of Rosalie Vincent, had she not returned to the village where the young girl had attracted her fleeting fancy.