Roger she held in the utmost veneration and esteem, regarding him as something more than mortal. She had never carried the game-bag for him, or put worms upon his hook, for he neither fished nor hunted; but she used to ride with him on horseback, biting her lips and winking hard to keep down her tears and conquer her fear of the spirited animal he bade her ride. She would have walked straight into the crater of Vesuvius if Roger had told her to, and at his command she tried to overcome her mortal terror of horses,—to sit and ride, and carry her reins and whip as he taught her, until at last she grew accustomed to the big black horse, and Roger’s commendations of her skill in managing it were a sufficient recompense for weary hours of riding through the lanes, and meadows, and woods of Millbank. So, too, when Roger gave her a Latin grammar and bade her learn its pages, she set herself at once to the task, studying day and night, and growing feverish and thin, and nervous, until Hester interfered, and said “a child of ten was no more fit to study Latin than she was to build a ship, and Roger must let her alone till she was older if he did not want to kill her.” Then Roger, who in his love for books had forgotten that children did not all possess his tastes or powers of endurance, put the grammar away and took Magdalen with him to New York to a scientific lecture, of which she did not understand a word, and during which she went fast asleep with her head on his shoulder, and her queer little straw bonnet dreadfully jammed and hanging down her back. Roger tied on her bonnet when the lecture was over, and tried to straighten the pinch in front, and never suspected that it was at all different from the other bonnets around him. The next night he took her to Niblo’s, where she nearly went crazy with delight; and for weeks after, her little room at Millbank was the scene of many a pantomime, as she tried to reproduce for Bessie’s benefit the wonderful things she had seen.