Amy Winfield, the subject of the above remarks, was the only daughter of a
gentleman who had once been Mr. Clifford's most intimate friend, and also
his partner in many business transactions. Mr. Winfield had long resided
abroad, and there had lost the wife whom he had married rather late in
life. When feeling his own end drawing near, his thoughts turned wistfully
to the friend of his early manhood, and, as he recalled Mr. Clifford's
rural home, he felt that he could desire no better refuge for his child. He
had always written of her as his "little girl," and such she was in his
fond eyes, although in fact she had seen eighteen summers. Her slight
figure and girlish ways had never dispelled the illusion that she was still
a child, and as such he had commended her to his friend, who had responded
to the appeal as to a sacred claim, and had already decided to give her a
daughter's place in his warm heart. Mr. Winfield could not have chosen a
better guardian for the orphan and her property, and a knowledge of this
truth had soothed the last hours of the dying man.

It struck Leonard that the muffled figure he picked up at the station and
carried through the dusk and snow to the sleigh was rather tall and heavy
for the child he was expecting; but he wrapped her warmly, almost beyond
the possibility of speaking, or even breathing, and spoke the hearty and
encouraging words which are naturally addressed to a little girl. After
seeing that her trunks were safely bestowed in a large box-sledge, under
the charge of black Abram, one of the farm-hands, he drove rapidly
homeward, admonishing Alfred, on the way, "to be sociable." The boy,
however, had burrowed so deep under the robes as to be invisible and
oblivious. When Leonard was about to lift her out of the sleigh, as he
had placed her in it, the young girl protested, and said:

"I fear I shall disappoint you all by being larger and older than you