“Oh, I wish you could see Aunt Mary, I am sure she could convince you that you are wrong. “You think that I cannot understand your feelings, and that nothing is easier for me than to receive a stranger here. But, Clara, you do know that you love not our precious mother more devotedly than I, nor cherish her memory more sacredly; I am quite sure that no child could. It was terrible for me, at first, to think of seeing another here in her place, of calling another by her consecrated name. It was sacrilege to me. But Aunt Mary talked to me so kindly, and taught me to think calmly and reasonably about it, and I became certain that I ought to be an affectionate, dutiful child to my father’s wife if it were in my power. And I am sure it will be easy, for she is loveable. “I am grateful to father for giving me so excellent a friend. I shall never love her better than Aunt Mary, indeed; but it is so pleasant for us to be together once more in our own home. Only think--you at boarding-school, Neddie at grandfather’s, I at Uncle Talford’s, and poor father here alone. I am sure we shall be vastly happier here together, if you will only be a good girl.” “I am not going to be!” said Clara, with a pouting smile. “Ah! not another word,” cried Alice, with a playful menace. “I shall call it treason to listen to you. I shall go away so that you may have nobody to say wicked things to.” And with the words she ran from the room and shut the culprit in. CHAPTER III. Weeks flitted over the Gregorys, whose course it is needless to trace. Aunt Debby became fully satisfied that if there was a woman in the world fit for Dr. Gregory it was the one he had married. Few children ever had a step-mother like her, very few indeed. Never a loud word nor a cross look had she seen, never! She guessed, too, there were not many women, ladies born and bred, that knew when work was done about right better than she, not many. She didn’t know who should be a judge if she wasn’t, that had kept Dr. Arthur Gregory’s house for upward of twenty years--twenty years last August. What was that gentleman’s private opinion in the matter, these closing sentences of an epistle given under his hand will tell. “. . . . A strangely excellent wife is this same Catharine Gregory. Alone in her society, I love her; with my children, I am grateful to her; among my friends, I am proud of her. Every day convinces me more perfectly that I have found in her such a combination of virtues as I have never seen or hoped to see since departed ‘The being beauteous Who unto my youth was given.’ Hoping, for your sake, my dear Ashmun, (though with doubt I confess,) that this planet bears such another, I am yours, Gregory.” And many were the doctor’s patients whose pale faces lighted at the sight of her, and whose wo-laden hearts beat freer to the music of her step.