The gaiety, the frankness, and unassuming manner of Percy rendered him a most acceptable visitant at Isis Lodge, so the cottage was called; he was ever ready with some joyous tale, either of Oxford or of the metropolis, to bring a smile even to the lips of Mrs. Amesfort. It was not likely that he should so frequently visit the cottage without exciting the curiosity and risibility of his college companions; but he was enabled cheerfully and with temper to withstand it all, feeling secure in his own integrity, and confident that the situation in which he stood relative to the inmates of that cottage was mutually understood. Several inquiries Percy made concerning these interesting females; but no intelligence of their former lives could he obtain; they had only settled in the cottage a few months previous to the period of his first acquaintance with them; and whence they came, and who they were, no one knew nor cared to know. It was enough for the poor for many miles round, that the assistance of the strangers was extended towards them, with kind words and consolation in their troubles; and for the Oxonians, that though they received with extreme and even grateful politeness the visits made them, they were never returned. One little member of this small family Percy had not mentioned, a little girl, who might have been about eight or nine years old, an interesting child, whom Percy had saved from a watery grave in the rapid Isis, which rolled at the base of the grounds; a child, in whom the affections of her widowed mother were centred with a force and intensity, that it appeared death itself could but divide; and she was, indeed, one to love--affectionate, and full of glee; yet the least sign of increased suffering on the part of her mother would check the wild exuberance of childish spirits, without diminishing in the least her cheerfulness, and she would throw her arms around her neck, and fondly ask, if she might by kisses while away the pain. Many a game of play did she have with her preserver, whose extreme kindness and excessive liveliness excited the affections of the child, and increased and preserved the gratitude his courageous conduct had occasioned in the bosom of that young devoted mother, whose every earthly joy was centred in her fatherless child.