“Please don’t scold him, Mr. Bolling; it’s not his fault, poor little fellow! It was I who asked Mr. Sutherland to take him from the field and place him in the garden, because it is shadier there, and the work is lighter. Everybody cannot be strong and handsome—can they, Fly?” And the gentle speaker turned and laid her hand kindly upon the boy’s head and smiled encouragingly in his face. The child looked up in grateful affection; and the eyes of all the party were raised to welcome the orphan step-daughter of Mrs. Vivian. She was a fair, pale girl, of a gentle, thoughtful, pensive cast of countenance and style of beauty, with which her plain dress of deep mourning perfectly harmonized. “Come and sit by me, Rosalie, love,” said the widow, making room for the maiden, half embracing her with one arm. The kind girl put an orange in the boy’s hand, and, smiling, motioned him away; and Fly, no longer mortified, but solaced and cheerful, ran off. “Now proceed, Mr. Bolling. Rosalie, dove, Mr. Bolling is explaining to us the two great motive powers of the universe; the centripetal, which he says means the law of the Lord, and the centrifugal, which he says means the temptation of the demon. And we, my love, are the planetary bodies, kept from extremes of good and evil by the opposite action of these two forces. Is not this it, Mr. Bolling?” “No, madam; no! no! no! Lord! Lord! Thus it is to expose one’s theories, especially to Mrs. Vivian there, who would wrest the plainest text of Scripture to her own perdition. No, ma’am; I was about to say that the overruling will of Providence and the free agency of man were the two great motive powers of the moral universe—the human free will, being the great inward and impulsive force, is the centrifugal or flying-off power, and the government of God the centripetal or constraining power; that in the moral world these two great forces modify each other’s action, just as their prototypes do in the material world—keeping all in healthful action. Do you understand me?” “Do you understand _yourself_, Mr. Bolling?”