attached friend. She had a very happy home, and I was glad to enjoy it
with her, particularly when my uncle accompanied me, for then her father
and he became absorbed in each other, and left us to our own devices--not
very evil ones, but too childish and trifling to claim the sympathy of
such very grave men as they were.

We had both become tall, womanly girls, but Uncle Pennyman and Mr. Haines
called us children, and treated us as such; and Bessie was just writing to
me about her father's telling her she must begin to think of serious
things, when my uncle remarked to me that the time was approaching when I
should prepare myself to assume the duties and responsibilities of a
rational female. Just as if we had waited to be told this, when in fact
Bessie and I had been consulting about our bonnets and dresses in the most
grave and mature manner for years past, and arranging our future on plans
that for variety and agreeability could not have been surpassed had we
been brought up on the _Arabian Nights_ and Moore's _Poems_, instead of
Baxter's _Saint's Rest_ and Pollok's _Course of Time_.

"There are several questions of vital importance that have been growing
daily stronger in my mind," said my uncle Pennyman. "My friend Thomas
Haines has a gift in clearing points and expounding meanings; so that I
feel it to be for my mind's edifying and my soul's profit to go to him for
counsel."

I was delighted to hear this. I wanted to see Bessie, and I blessed the
bond that united these good brothers in Israel and drew us together so
often. Mr. Haines was good at texts, and my uncle was wonderfully expert
at dreams. Mr. Haines was a great dreamer, and my uncle constantly
stumbled over passages needing elucidation. So we lived in harmonious
intercourse, and Bessie and I talked of all our plans and delights while