whitin’ ’s safer than Brownin’ for her sort, and I thought she was contented enough.”

Betsy’s two-year-old disapproval of this one of her mistress’s undertakings revived. Education was a good thing, without doubt, but according to Betsy’s judgment it was best, under circumstances of such dependence as existed with Mrs. Pogram’s pretty adopted child, to let well enough alone. Mrs. Pogram’s principal motive in giving the girl a home had been the material help she could render, and it was a doubtful experiment to send her to the new environment of the city, and the novel companionship of her fellow students, unless her benefactress intended to prolong her watch over the young girl’s fortunes; and this Betsy knew would not be the case; for long before Rosalie’s term of study was ended,[21] Mrs. Bruce’s energies would be directed toward superintending the affairs of somebody else. The girl’s grateful letters had begun to be ignored some time before Mrs. Bruce joined her adored boy in Europe; and it is doubtful when she would have thought again of Rosalie Vincent, had she not returned to the village where the young girl had attracted her fleeting fancy.

[21]

“I gave her the wings to soar,” she now added virtuously, “and I inquired of Captain Salter if she had used them. I found his report quite unsatisfactory.”

“Why, where is Rosalie?” asked Betsy quickly, stopping her labors in the interest of her query.

“Captain Salter wasn’t sure. He said he supposed Mrs. Pogram knew, but there had been some recent quarrel with a brother of Mrs. Pogram’s and it had ended in Rosalie’s going away.”

“Soarin’, perhaps,” remarked Betsy dryly, grasping the legs of an unoffending table and giving it vicious tweaks with the dust-cloth. “Just as well folks shouldn’t be given wings sometimes, in my opinion. When a bird’s got plumage like Rosalie’s, it’d better stick to the[22] long grass. The world’s just full o’ folks that if they catch sight o’ the brightness never rest till they get a shot at it and drag it down.”

[22]

“Was she so pretty? Let’s see, was she dark or light? Oh, I remember her hair was blonde.”

Betsy gave one look at her employer. It was entirely characteristic that two years should have sunk the village girl’s memory in a haze.

Mrs. Bruce sighed and began to polish another fork. 

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