Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and entertained his fancy began to affect him with grave doubts. He could not but see that M’liss was revengeful, irreverent, and willful. But there was one better quality which pertained to her semi-savage disposition—the faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another—though not always an attribute of the noble savage—truth. M’liss was both fearless and sincere—perhaps in such a character the adjectives were synonymous. The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and had arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think sincerely, that he was generally the slave of his own prejudices, when he determined to call on the Rev. Mr. McSnagley for advice. This decision was somewhat humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were not friends. But he thought of M’liss, and the evening of their first meeting; and perhaps with a pardonable superstition that it was not chance alone that had guided her willful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a complacent consciousness of the rare magnanimity of the act, he choked back his dislike and went to McSnagley. The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. Moreover, he observed that the master was looking “peartish” and hoped he had got over the “neuralgy” and “rheumatiz.” He himself had been troubled with a dumb “ager” since last conference. But he had learned to “rastle and pray.” Pausing a moment to enable the master to write this certain method of curing the dumb “ager” upon the book and volume of his brain, Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. “She is an adornment to Chris_tew_anity, and has a likely, growin’ young family,” added Mr. McSnagley; “and there is that mannerly young gal—so well behaved—Miss Clytie.” In fact, Clytie’s perfections seemed to affect him to such an extent that he dwelt for several minutes upon them. The master was doubly embarrassed. In the first place, there was an enforced contrast with poor M’liss in all this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there was something unpleasantly confidential in his tone of speaking of Morpher’s earliest born. So that the master, after a few futile efforts to say something natural, found it convenient to recall another engagement and left without asking the information required, but in his after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr. McSnagley the full benefit of having refused it. But the master obtained the advice in another and unexpected direction.