"Not one of the other girls suspect, in the least, who you are," said Martha, smiling, when we had got through with the questions and answers so natural to our situation. "I am surprised that Henrietta has not, for _she_ prides herself on her penetration. She is as much in the dark as the others, however." "And Miss Mary Warren--the young lady who has just left the room--has she not some _small_ notion that I am not a common Dutch music-grinder?" Patt laughed, and that so merrily as to cause the tones of her sweet voice to fill me with delight, as I remembered what she had been in childhood and girlhood five years before, and she shook her bright tresses off her cheeks ere she would answer. "No, Hugh," she replied, "she fancies you an _uncommon_ Dutch music-grinder; an _artiste_ that not only grinds, but who dresses up his harmonies in such a way as to be palatable to the most refined taste. How came Mary to think you and my uncle two reduced German gentlemen?" "And does the dear girl believe--that is, does Miss Mary Warren do us so much honour, as to imagine that?" "Indeed she does, for she told us as much as soon as she got home; and Henrietta and Ann have made themselves very merry with their speculations on the subject of Miss Warren's great incognito. They call you Herzog von Geige." "Thank them for that." I am afraid I answered a little too pointedly, for I saw that Patt seemed surprised. "But your American towns are just such half-way things as to spoil young women; making them neither refined and polished as they might be in real capitals, while they are not left the simplicity and nature of the country." "Well, Master Hugh, this is being very cross about a very little, and not particularly complimentary to your own sister. And why not _your_ American towns, as well as _ours_?--are you no longer one of us?" "Certainly; one of _yours_, always, my dearest Patt, though not one of every chattering girl who may set up for a _belle_, with her Dukes of Fiddle! But, enough of this;--you like the Warrens?" "Very much so; father and daughter. The first is just what a clergyman should be; of a cultivation and intelligence to fit him to be any man's companion, and a simplicity like that of a child. You remember his predecessor--so dissatisfied, so selfish, so lazy, so censorious, so unjust to every person and thing around him, and yet so exacting; and, at the same time, so----" "What? Thus far you have drawn his character well; I should like to hear the remainder." "I have said more than I ought already; for one has an idea that, by bringing a clergyman into disrepute, it brings religion and the church into discredit, too. A priest must be a _very_ bad man to have injurious things said of him, in this country, Hugh." "That is, perhaps, true. But you like Mr. Warren better than him who has left you?"