inveighing, or you might be growing narrow."

"He is much too good to belong to them!" said Erica
enthusiastically.

As she spoke Raeburn entered, bringing the visitor with him, and
they all sat down to their meal, Erica pouring out tea and
attending to every one's wants, fondling her cat, and listening to
the conversation, with all the time a curious perception that to
sit down to table with one of her father's opponents was a very
novel experience. She could not help speculating as to the
thoughts and impressions of her companions. Her mother was, she
thought, pleased and interested for about her worn face there was
the look of contentment which invariably came when for a time the
bitterness of the struggle of life was broken by any sign of
friendliness. Her father was--as he generally was in his own
house--quiet, gentle in manner, ready to be both an attentive and
an interested listener. This gift he had almost as markedly as the
gift of speech; he at once perceived that his guest was no ordinary
man, and by a sort of instinct he had discovered on what subjects
he was best calculated to speak, and wherein they could gain most
from him. Charles Osmond's thoughts she could only speculate
about; but that he was ready to take them all as friends, and did
not regard them as a different order of being, was plain.

The conversation had drifted into regions of abstruse science, when
Erica, who had been listening attentively, was altogether diverted
by the entrance of the servant, who brought her a brown-paper
parcel. Eagerly opening it, she was almost bewildered by the
delightful surprise of finding a complete edition of Longfellow's