that seemed to say she saw what it was, but saw also how little she could
do for it. Oh the depth of the love-trouble in those eyes of hers!

Martha never set herself to teach me anything, but I could not know
Martha without learning something of the genuine human heart. I gathered
from her by unconscious assimilation. Possibly, a spiritual action
analogous to exosmose and endosmose, takes place between certain souls.




CHAPTER III.


MY UNCLE.

Now I must tell you what my uncle was like.

The first thing that struck you about him would have been, how tall and
thin he was. The next thing would have been, how he stooped; and the
next, how sad he looked. It scarcely seemed that Martha Moon had been
able to do much for him. Yet doubtless she had done, and was doing, more
than either he or she knew. He had rather a small head on the top of his
long body; and when he stood straight up, which was not very often, it
seemed so far away, that some one said he took him for Zacchaeus looking
down from the sycomore. _I_ never thought of analyzing his appearance,
never thought of comparing him with any one else. To me he was the best
and most beautiful of men--the first man in all the world. Nor did I
change my mind about him ever--I only came to want another to think of
him as I did.