“Have they broken Jennie Brown’s? She doesn’t believe it, nor her present young man either. I’ve no doubt he thinks her as good as new.” “I dare say. But such things hurt girls in general, and you professors ought to see to it, and I want to know why you don’t. But is that all the news? That’s such a small matter! such an old sort of thing! If I had come from Hampstead, I would have brought more than that.” So Bessie rattled on, partly because she loved to talk to this admirable Professor, but mainly to put off the crisis which she saw was coming. But it was vain to hope for clemency, or even for much delay, from Aunt Mercy. Grim, unhappy, peevish as many invalids are, and impelled by a remorseless conscience, she was not to be diverted from finishing with Foster the horrid bone which she had commenced to pick with Bessie. You could see in her face what kind of thoughts and purposes were in her heart. She was used to quarrelling; or, to speak more strictly, she was used to entertaining hard feelings towards others; but she had never learned to express her bitter sentiments frankly. Unable to destroy them, she had felt herself bound in general not to utter them, and this non-utterance had grown to be one of her despotic and distressing “duties.” Nothing could break through her shyness, her reserve, her habit of silence, but an emotion which amounted to passion; and such an emotion she was not only unable to conceal, but she was also unable to exhibit it either nobly or gracefully: it shone all through her, and it made her seem spiteful. As she was about to speak, however, a glance at Bessie’s anxious face checked her. After her painful, severe fashion, she really loved the girl, and she did not want to load her with any more sorrow than was strictly necessary. Moreover, the surely worthy thought occurred to her that Heaven might favor one last effort to convert this wrong-minded young man into one who could be safely intrusted with the welfare of her niece and the management of her money. Hailing the suggestion, in accordance with her usual exaltation of faith, as an indication from the sublimest of all authority, she entered upon her task with such power as nature had given her and such sweetness as a shattered nervous system had left her. “Mr. Foster, there’s one thing I greatly desire to see,” she began in a hurried, tremulous tone. “I want you to come out from among the indifferent, an’ join yourself to _us_. Why don’t you do it? Why don’t you become a professor?”