"Precisely," said Mr. Goodlow.

"That's what I told father, in the first place," said Miss Maria.
"I guess Lyddy'd know how to conduct herself wherever she was,--just
the words I used."

"I don't deny it, Maria, I don't deny it," shrilly piped the old man.
"I ain't afraid of any harm comin' to Lyddy any more'n what you be.
But what I said was, Wouldn't she feel kind of strange, sort of lost,
as you may say, among so many, and she the only _one_?"

"She will know how to adapt herself to circumstances," said Mr.
Goodlow. "I was conversing last summer with that Mrs. Bland who
boarded at Mr. Parker's, and she told me that girls in Europe are
brought up with no habits of self-reliance whatever, and that young
ladies are never seen on the streets alone in France and Italy."

"Don't you think," asked Miss Maria, hesitating to accept this
ridiculous statement, "that Mrs. Bland exaggerated some?"

"She _talked_ a great deal," admitted Mr. Goodlow. "I should be
sorry if Lydia ever lost anything of that native confidence of hers
in her own judgment, and her ability to take care of herself under
any circumstances, and I do not think she will. She never seemed
conceited to me, but she _was_ the most self-reliant girl I
ever saw."

"You've hit it there, Mr. Goodlow. Such a spirit as she always had!"
sighed Miss Maria. "It was just so from the first. It used to go to my
heart to see that little thing lookin' after herself, every way, and