“And all _is_ right. Two retainers have already come in, one of fifty dollars, another of twenty. Old Judge Bailey sent for your father the other day--the judge is uncle to Mrs. Hayden; your father read with him six months, but never had put himself in his way, and so the judge had quite lost sight of him. He told your father that he would be in need of him often, and that if he--the judge, I mean--does sometimes scold and send the chairs against the wall when the gout is on him, your father must let it go as if it were a little rain and hail; he will give him, at the same time that he scolds, good work and good pay. I hope he wont scold, for I think your father is too proud to bear much--he would sooner sacrifice the work and the pay. I am afraid that nearly all these energetic patrons are either cross or whimsical, or have some troublesome fault. Your father says that, according to your Uncle Frederick’s philosophy of compensation, they are likely to have. Well, we must wait and see. “P. S. I left this for your father to write a little, if he could find time; but he can’t, as true as you live. He is busy early and late with great books, and pens, and sheets of paper, and parcels of documents tied up with red tape. You don’t know how good this seems. He is as happy with it as a child, and proud of being all fagged out. You would be delighted to see him; he looks younger by ten years than he did a fortnight ago. He wants you to come home now. He says he couldn’t have consented to your going to stay so long but that he thought it might be pleasanter for you there. I couldn’t certainly. _I_ hope you will try to come sooner, for, guess who comes in to inquire about you--Esquire Charles Hayden; _our_ Mr. Hayden’s youngest brother, you know, just home from California when you went away. He has established himself here; has his office close by your father’s; was in last evening, and didn’t want to talk of anybody but you. Mrs. Hayden had been telling him about you. “Good-bye, dear. Mrs. Hayden has just sent me word that she will call in an hour, with Charles, to take me out to ride with them. I believe it more and more, that truth is best. Don’t you, Rose?” No, my mother! I should believe it all the same, if, in following after it, you had been led into countless difficulties and tribulations, I should still believe it altogether best, because best for the soul, let what will come--come to the body. Mr. Marsden, one of the village merchants, went to Boston yesterday, and aunt commissioned him to tell Alfred Cullen, with whom he deals largely, to come up and spend New Year with her and uncle. Now heaven forbid! Uncle says--“Come, Monde, come and hear what that rascally Louis Napoleon is doing.” I go, for France is, as it were, our next door neighbor in these days. CHAPTER IV. MONDE TO EDITH. _Danville, Dec. 29, 1851._