now that the uncertainty was over.

Alone once more, I reasoned with myself, and felt I was doing an
unwise thing. Just at that time my husband was away on business for
some months; and I had no one to advise me, and no one to say me nay
either. My conscience told me my husband would say, "We cannot tell
who this boy is, where he has lived, or who are his associates; he
may be connected with a gang of thieves for what we know to the
contrary. Wait, and have proper references before trusting him in the
house."

And he would be right to say so to me, but not every one listens to
conscience when it points the opposite way to inclination. Well, J.
Cole remained; and when I entered the dining-room, to my solitary
dinner, he was there, with a face shining from soap and water, his
curls evidently soaped too, to make them go tidily on his forehead.
The former page having left his livery jacket and trousers, Mary had
let Joe dress in them, at his earnest request.

She told me afterwards that he had sewn up the clothes in the neatest
manner wherever they could be made smaller; and the effect of the
jacket, which he had stuffed out in the chest with hay, as we
discovered by the perfume, was very droll. He had a great love of
bright colors, and the trousers being large, showed bright red socks;
the jacket sleeves being much too short for the long arms, of which
he was so proud, allowed the wristbands of a vivid blue flannel shirt
to be seen.

I was alone, so could put up with this droll figure at my elbow; but
the seriousness of his face was such a contrast to the comicality of