"Yes," chimed in Ellen, who Aunt Debby said was born for no earthly use except to "take Walter down." "I shouldn’t suppose you’d say anything, for don’t you remember when you went to Boston with Mr. Smith to see the caravan, and stopped at the Tremont, and when they pounded that big thing for dinner you were scared almost to death, and hid behind the door screaming, ’The lion’s out! the lion’s out! Don’t you hear him roar?’" Walter colored crimson, and replied apologetically: "Pshaw, Nell, I was a little shaver then, only ten years old. I’d never heard a gong before, and why shouldn’t I think the lion out?" "And why shouldn’t Jessie be afraid of snakes if she never saw one? She’s only eight, and you were ten," was the reply of Ellen, whose heart bounded at the thoughts of a companion, and who had unwittingly avowed herself the champion of the unknown Jessie Graham. "Hush, children," interrupted the deacon. "It isn’t worth while to quarrel. Folks raised in the city are sometimes green as well as country people, and this Jessie may be one of ’em. But the question now is, shall she come to Deerwood or not?" and he turned inquiringly toward his daughter. "Mary, are you willing to be a mother to Richard Graham’s child?" Mrs. Howland started, and sweeping her hand across her face, answered: "I am willing," while Aunt Debby, in her straight-backed chair mumbled: "To think it should come to that,—Mary taking care of his and another woman’s child; but, law! it’s no more than I should have done if he hadn’t been killed," and with a sigh for the widower and his four motherless offspring, Aunt Debby also gave her assent, thinking how she would knit lamb’s-wool stockings for the little girl, whose feet she guessed were about the size of Ellen’s. "Oh, I’m so glad!" cried Ellen, when it was settled, "for now there’ll be somebody to play with when my head aches too hard to go to school. I hope she’ll bring a lot of dolls; and, Walter, you won’t ink their faces and break their legs as you did that cob baby Aunt Debby made for me?" When thus appealed to, Walter was reading for himself the letter which had fallen at his grandfather’s feet, and his clear hazel eyes were moist with tears, as he read the postscript: "I have as yet heard nothing from Seth, poor fellow! I hoped he would come back ere this. It may be I shall meet him in my travels." "He isn’t so bad a man after all," thought Walter, and with his feelings softened toward the father, he was more favorably disposed toward the daughter’s dolls, and to Ellen’s question he replied, "Of course I shan’t bother her if she lets me alone and don’t put on too many airs." "I can’t see to write as well as I used to," said the deacon, after everything had been arranged, "and Walter must answer the letter." "Walter won’t do any such thing," was the mental comment of the boy, whose animosity began to return toward one who he fancied had done his father a wrong.