joy and all good things, and this love is present in the child
Jesus.--Now, to God the Father, &c."

"O my baby Lord!" I said in my heart; for the clergyman had forgotten
me, and said nothing about us old bachelors.

Of course this is but the substance of the sermon; and as, although I
came to know him well before many days were over, he never lent me his
manuscript--indeed, I doubt if he had any--my report must have lost
something of his nervous strength, and be diluted with the weakness of
my style.

Although I had been attending so well to the sermon, however, my eyes
had now and then wandered, not only to Adela's face, but all over the
church as well; and I could not help observing, a few pillars off, and
partly round a corner, the face of a young man--well, he was about
thirty, I should guess--out of which looked a pair of well-opened
hazel eyes, with rather notable eyelashes. Not that I, with my own
weak pair of washed-out grey, could see the eyelashes at that
distance, but I judged it must be their length that gave a kind of
feminine cast to the outline of the eyes. Nor should I have noticed
the face itself much, had it not seemed to me that those eyes were
pursuing a very thievish course; for, by the fact that, as often as I
looked their way, I saw the motion of their withdrawal, I concluded
that they were stealing glances at, certainly not from, my adopted
niece, Adela. This made me look at the face more attentively. I found
it a fine, frank, brown, country-looking face.--Could it have anything
to do with Adela's condition? Absurd! How could such health and ruddy
life have anything to do with the worn pallor of her countenance? Nor
did a single glance on the part of Adela reveal that she was aware of