asks for sympathy. Perhaps I have been too proud to lay open my
follies before you and my little Kate."

Alice looked up, with a touch of her old eagerness, as Uncle John went
on.

"It was long before you were born, my dear, that, for some college
peccadilloes,--it is so long ago that I have almost forgotten now what
they were,--I was suspended (rusticated we called it) for a term, and
advised by the grave and dignified president to spend my time in
repenting and in keeping up with my class. I had no mind to come
home; I had no wish, by my presence, to keep the memory of my
misdemeanors before my father's mind for six months; so I asked and
gained leave to spend the summer in a little town in Western
Massachusetts, where, as I said, I should have nothing to tempt me
from my studies. I had heard from a classmate what famous shooting and
fishing were to be found there, and I knew something of the beauty of
Berkshire scenery; but I honorably intended to study well and
faithfully, taking only the moderate amount of recreation necessary
for my health.

"I went, and soon established myself in a quiet farm-house with my
books, gun, and fishing-rod, and had passed there a whole month with
an approving conscience and tolerable success both in studies and
sport, when the farmer announced one morning, that, as he had one
boarder, he might as well take another, and that a New York lady had
been inquiring of his neighbor Johnson, when he was in the city last
week, for some farm-house where they would be willing to take her
cheap for the summer. She could have the best room, and he didn't
suppose she'd be in anybody's way, so he had told Johnson that she