which we have undertaken to make happier than we find it. Let us
warm her poor, shivering body with this good fire, and her poor,
shivering heart with our best kindness. Let us feed her, and make
her one of us. As we do by this friendless girl, so shall we prosper.
And, in good time, whatever is desirable for us to know will be
melted out of her, as inevitably as those tears which we see now."

"At least," remarked I, "you may tell us how and where you met with
her."

"An old man brought her to my lodgings," answered Hollingsworth, "and
begged me to convey her to Blithedale, where--so I understood
him--she had friends; and this is positively all I know about the
matter."

Grim Silas Foster, all this while, had been busy at the supper-table,
pouring out his own tea and gulping it down with no more sense of its
exquisiteness than if it were a decoction of catnip; helping himself
to pieces of dipt toast on the flat of his knife blade, and dropping
half of it on the table-cloth; using the same serviceable implement
to cut slice after slice of ham; perpetrating terrible enormities
with the butter-plate; and in all other respects behaving less like a
civilized Christian than the worst kind of an ogre. Being by this
time fully gorged, he crowned his amiable exploits with a draught
from the water pitcher, and then favored us with his opinion about
the business in hand. And, certainly, though they proceeded out of
an unwiped mouth, his expressions did him honor.

"Give the girl a hot cup of tea and a thick slice of this first-rate
bacon," said Silas, like a sensible man as he was. "That's what she