Laura Lovel was the eldest surviving daughter of a clergyman settled in a retired and beautiful village at the western extremity of the state of Massachusetts. Between Laura and her two youngest sisters, three other children had died. Being so much their senior, it was in her power to assist her father materially in the instruction of Ella and Rosa; as after his family had become small, Mr. Lovel thought it best that the two little girls should receive all their education at home, and never were children that conferred more credit on their teachers. Mrs. Lovel was a plain, good woman, of excellent practical sense, a notable seamstress, and a first-rate housewife. Few families were more perfectly happy, notwithstanding that the limited income of Mr. Lovel (though sufficient for comfort) left them little or nothing for superfluities. They had a very neat house standing in the centre of a flourishing garden, in which utility had been the first consideration, though blended as far as possible with beauty. The stone fence looked like a hedge of nasturtians. The pillars supporting the rustic piazza that surrounded the house, were the rough trunks of small trees, with a sufficient portion of the chief branches remaining, to afford resting-places for the luxuriant masses of scarlet beans that ran over them; furnishing, when the blossoms were off, and the green pods full grown, an excellent vegetable-dish for the table. The house was shaded with fruit-trees exclusively; and the garden shrubs were all raspberry, currant, and gooseberry, and the flowers were chiefly those that had medicinal properties, or could be turned to culinary purposes--with the exception of some that were cultivated purposely for the bees. A meadow which pastured two cows and a horse, completed the little domain. About the time that Laura Lovel had finished her seventeenth year, there came to the village of Rosebrook an old friend of her father's, whom he had long since lost sight of. They had received their early education at the same school, they had met again at college, and had some years after performed together a voyage to India; Mr. Brantley as supercargo, Mr. Lovel as a missionary. Mr. Brantley had been very successful in business, and was now a merchant of wealth and respectability, with a handsome establishment in Boston. Mr. Lovel had settled down as pastor of the principal church in his native village.