a care-taker and companion who should later on be a governess she was
consulting her own desire of freedom from the duties of a mother. It was
enough for her that the applicant for the position had the highest
recommendations, that she was prepossessing in appearance, and it was
soon perceived that the guardian was truthful, faithful, vigilant, and of
an affectionate disposition and an innate refinement.

Ann McDonald was the only daughter of a clergyman of the Scotch Church,
and brought up in the literary atmosphere common in the most cultivated
Edinburgh homes. She had been accurately educated, and always with the
knowledge that her education might be her capital in life. After the
death of her mother, when she was nineteen, she had been her father's
housekeeper, and when in her twenty-fourth year her father relinquished
his life and his salary, she decided, under the advice of influential
friends, to try her fortune in America. And she never doubted that it
was a providential guidance that brought her into intimate relations with
the infant heiress. It seemed probable that a woman so attractive and so
solidly accomplished would not very long remain a governess, but in fact
her career was chosen from the moment she became interested in the
development of the mind and character of the child intrusted to her care.
It is difficult to see how our modern life would go on as well as it does
if there were not in our homes a good many such faithful souls. It
sometimes seems, in this shifting world, that about the best any of us
can do is to prepare some one else for doing something well.

Miss McDonald had a pretty comprehensive knowledge of English literature
and history, and, better perhaps than mere knowledge, a discriminating
and cultivated taste. If her religious education had twisted her view
of the fine arts, she had nevertheless a natural sympathy for the
beautiful, and she would not have been a Scotchwoman if she had not had