'Your boyhood is over,' said uncle Bryan; 'you are now a man, with a man's responsibility, and a man's work to do in life. Do it well.' 'I will try to, uncle,' I replied. 'To perform one's duties,' continued uncle Bryan, 'taxes a man's judgment very severely, and as a man's judgment is generally the slave of his inclination, it is seldom that he can look back upon his life with satisfaction.' 'I don't quite understand that,' I observed; 'if a man's inclinations are good----' Uncle Bryan interrupted me, for I had paused. He took up my words. 'Inclination is an idle selfish imp. Life is full of temptations, and inclination leads us to them; we follow only too readily.' 'All that we can do,' said my mother, caressing me fondly, 'is to do our best; we are often the slave of circumstances, Bryan.' 'In many cases,' he replied, 'not in all, a man can rise above them. We do not exercise our reason sufficiently. We cry and fret like children because things are not exactly as we wish.' 'Do you?' asked Jessie quickly. He answered her evasively. 'I have my sorrows.' 'I am glad of that,' said Jessie, in a low tone. 'There is more wisdom in your remark,' he said, with a thoughtful observance of her, 'than you probably imagine. I give you credit for using it in the best and kindest sense.' 'I meant it in that sense,' said Jessie gently, drawing a little nearer to him. 'Will you tell me why you are glad that I should have sorrows?' 'For one reason----' 'Well?' 'It does not remove you so far from us,' said Jessie, with less confidence than she usually exhibited. 'I try to do that?' he asked. 'I try to remove myself from you?' 'I think so,' she answered. 'You are not angry with me?' 'No, child,' he said, and the gentleness of his tone surprised me. 'But for sorrow and trouble,' mused my mother, the tenderest qualities of our nature would never be shown. God is very good to us, in our hardest trials. Dear Bryan! I am thinking of the time when Chris and I were in London without a friend. As I look upon my darling boy now, and think of the happy future there is before him----' She did not complete her sentence, but she went towards uncle Bryan, and stooped and kissed him. 'Say no more, Emma,' he said huskily; you do not know how vastly the balance is in your favour.' 'Notwithstanding your sorrows? questioned Jessie. 'Yes,' he replied, with an approving nod, notwithstanding my sorrows. You are sharp-witted, Jessie.' 'Thank you, uncle,' she said merrily. It was almost like the commencement of a new and more harmonious era in our relations with one another. 'How old are you, Jessie?' I asked. 'I shall be eighteen in a little more than three months. A girl becomes a woman at eighteen, I am told. I shall expect to be treated with dignity then, Chris.'