From time to time the Doctor summons her to his study to have serious talk with her. She has, indeed, shared the Saturday-night instruction in the Catechism, in company with Reuben, and being quick at words, no matter how long they may be, she has learned it all; and Reuben and she dash through "what is required" and "what is forbidden" and "the reasons annexed" like a pair of prancing horses, kept diligently in hand by that excellent whip, Miss Johns. But the study has not wrought that gravity in the mind of the child which the good parson had hoped for; the seed, he fears, has fallen upon stony places. He therefore, as we have said, summons her from time to time to his study. And Adele comes, always at the first summons, with a tripping step, and, with a little coquettish adjustment of her dress and hair, flings herself into the big chair before him,-- "Now, New Papa, here I am!" "Ah, Adaly! I wish, child, that you could be more serious than you are." "Serious! ha! ha!"--(she sees a look of pain on the face of the Doctor,) "but I will be,--I am"; and with great effort she throws a most unnatural expression of repose into her face. "You are a good girl, Adaly; but this is not the seriousness I want to find in you. I want you to feel, my child, that you are walking on the brink of a precipice,--that your heart is desperately wicked." "Oh, no, New Papa! you don't think I'm desperately wicked?"--and she says it with a charming eagerness of manner. "Yes, desperately wicked, Adaly,--leaning to the things of this world, and not fastening your affections on things above, on the realities beyond the grave." "But all that is so far away, New Papa!" "Not so far as you think, child; they may come to-day." Adele is sobered in earnest now, and tosses her little feet back and forth, in an agony of apprehension. The Doctor continues,-- "_To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts_"; and the sentiment and utterance are so like to the usual ones of the pulpit, that Adele takes courage again.