"She has wonderful eyes," said Mr. Sewell; "when she gets excited, they grow so large and so bright, it seems almost unnatural." "Dear me! has she?" said Miss Emily, in a tone of one who had been called upon to do something about it. "Well?" she added, inquiringly. "That little thing is only seven years old," said Mr. Sewell; "and she is thinking and feeling herself all into mere spirit--brain and nerves all active, and her little body so frail. She reads incessantly, and thinks over and over what she reads." "Well?" said Miss Emily, winding very swiftly on a skein of black silk, and giving a little twitch, every now and then, to a knot to make it subservient. It was commonly the way when Mr. Sewell began to talk with Miss Emily, that she constantly answered him with the manner of one who expects some immediate, practical proposition to flow from every train of thought. Now Mr. Sewell was one of the reflecting kind of men, whose thoughts have a thousand meandering paths, that lead nowhere in particular. His sister's brisk little "Well's?" and "Ah's!" and "Indeed's!" were sometimes the least bit in the world annoying. "What is to be done?" said Miss Emily; "shall we speak to Mrs. Pennel?" "Mrs. Pennel would know nothing about her." "How strangely you talk!--who should, if she doesn't?" "I mean, she wouldn't understand the dangers of her case." "Dangers! Do you think she has any disease? She seems to be a healthy child enough, I'm sure. She has a lovely color in her cheeks." Mr. Sewell seemed suddenly to become immersed in a book he was reading. "There now," said Miss Emily, with a little tone of pique, "that's the way you always do. You begin to talk with me, and just as I get interested in the conversation, you take up a book. It's too bad." "Emily," said Mr. Sewell, laying down his book, "I think I shall begin to give Moses Pennel Latin lessons this winter." "Why, what do you undertake that for?" said Miss Emily. "You have enough to do without that, I'm sure." "He is an uncommonly bright boy, and he interests me." "Now, brother, you needn't tell me; there is some mystery about the interest you take in that child, _you know_ there is." "I am fond of children," said Mr. Sewell, dryly. "Well, but you don't take as much interest in other boys. I never heard of your teaching any of them Latin before." "Well, Emily, he is an uncommonly interesting child, and the providential circumstances under which he came into our neighborhood"-- "Providential fiddlesticks!" said Miss Emily, with heightened color, "_I_ believe you knew that boy's mother." This sudden thrust brought a vivid color into Mr. Sewell's cheeks. To be interrupted so unceremoniously, in the midst of so very proper and ministerial a remark, was rather provoking, and he answered, with some asperity,--