“I will ask you to do nothing that your own good sense and kind heart may not approve,” answered the rector. “In plain terms then, and not to waste time by useless words of preface, my friend, Mr. Blyth, feels such admiration for your little Mary, and such a desire to help her, as far as may be, in her great misfortune, that he is willing and eager to make her future prospects in life his own peculiar care, by adopting her as his daughter. This offer, though coming, as I am aware, from a perfect stranger, can hardly astonish you, I think, if you reflect on the unusually strong claims which the child has to the compassion and kindness of all her fellow-creatures. Other strangers, as you have told us, have shown the deepest interest in her on many occasions. It is not therefore at all wonderful that a gentleman, whose Christian integrity of motive I have had opportunities of testing during a friendship of nearly twenty years, should prove the sincerity of his sympathy for the poor child, by such a proposal as I have now communicated to you.” “Don’t ask me to say yes to it, sir!” pleaded Mrs. Peckover, with tears in her eyes. “Don’t ask me to do that! Anything else to prove my gratitude for your kindness to us; but how can I part from my own little Mary? You can’t have the heart to ask it of me!” “I have the heart, Mrs. Peckover, to feel deeply for your distress at the idea of parting from the child; but, for her sake, I must again ask you to control your feelings. And, more than that, I must appeal to you by your love to her, to grant a fair hearing to the petition which I now make on Mr. Blyth’s behalf.” “I would, indeed, if I could, sir,--but it’s just because I love her so, that I can’t! Besides, as you yourself said, he’s a perfect stranger.” “I readily admit the force of that objection on your part, Mrs. Peckover; but let me remind you, that I vouch for the uprightness of his character, and his fitness to be trusted with the child, after twenty years’ experience of him. You may answer to that, that I am a stranger, too; and I can only ask you, in return, frankly to accept my character and position as the best proofs I can offer you that I am not unworthy of your confidence. If you placed little Mary for instruction (as you well might) in an asylum for the deaf and dumb, you would be obliged to put implicit trust in the authorities of that asylum, on much the same grounds as those I now advance to justify you in putting trust in me.” “Oh, sir! don’t think--pray don’t think I am unwilling to trust you--so kind and good as you have been to us to-day--and a clergyman too--I should be ashamed of myself, if I could doubt--”