The schoolmaster! Should I be permitted to go to school? or should I be kept drudging at home? Would this Mr. Grey think me very ignorant? I began to feel as if his forked-lightning eyes were already on me. My cheeks grew hot at the idea of making a blunder in his awful presence. What a miserable room my aunt had provided for him! If I could but put up some nice white curtains at the window, or get him a cushioned chair, or put in a bureau, or chest of drawers. It looked so comfortless--so different from the welcome my dear old father was wont to give to “the stranger within the gates;” and now memory pictured him, as he sat in the old arm chair, and I knelt again at the low foot-stool at his feet, and his hand strayed caressingly over my temples, and I listened to old continental stories, till the candle burned low in the socket, and only the fire-light flickered dimly on the old portrait of General Washington, and on my father’s time-worn face. My aunt’s shrill voice soon roused me from my reverie. Dinner time had come, and with it Mr. Grey--a gentlemanly young man, of about two and twenty, with a bright, keen, blue eye, and a frank, decided, off-hand manner, that seemed to me admirably in keeping with his erect, imposing figure and firm step. Even my uncle reefed in a sail or two in his presence, and my aunt involuntarily qualified her usual bluntness of manner. I uttered a heartfelt thanksgiving when dinner was over. CHAPTER IV. “Hetty,” said my uncle, as the door closed upon Mr. Grey. “I suppose you must go to school, or the neighbors will say we don’t treat you well. You ought to be very thankful for such a home as this, Hetty; women are poor miserable creatures, left without money. I wish it had pleased Providence to have made you a boy. You might then have done Jonathan’s work just as well as not, and saved me his wages and board. There’s a piece of stone wall waiting to be laid, and the barn wants shingling. Josiah now would be at the extravagance of hiring a mason and a carpenter to do it.