Poor Christian! If her hasty marriage, or any other mistake of her life,
needed pardon, surely it might be won for the earnest sincerity of this
vow, and for its self-forgetful, utter humility--"I will try."

For another half hour, at her entreaty, the children staid, though Letitia
and Arthur never relaxed from their dignified decorum farther than to
inform her that they were sometimes called "Titia" and "Atty;" that
their nurse was named Phillis; and that she had remained in the carriage
because "she said she would not come in." Still, having expected
nothing, the young step-mother was not disappointed. And when the
three left, Oliver having held up his rosy mouth voluntarily for "a good
large kiss," the sweetness of the caress lingered on her mouth like a
chrism of consecration, sanctifying her for these new duties which
seemed to have been sent to her without her choice, almost without her
volition; for she often felt, when she paused to thing at all, as if in the
successive links of circumstances which had brought about her
marriage, she had been a passive agent, led on step by step, like a
person half asleep. Would she ever awake?

When Mrs. Ferguson, re-entering, ready with any amount of sympathy,
found the young step-mother kissing her hand to the retreating carriage
with a composed smile, which asked no condolence, and offered no
confidences, the good lady was, to say the least, surprised. "But," as
she afterward confessed to at least two dozen of her most intimate
friends, "there always was something so odd, so different from most
young ladies about Miss. Oakley." However, to the young lady herself
she said nothing, except suggesting, rather meekly, that it was time to
change her dress.

"And just once more let me beg you to take my shawl--my very best--