The minister led Paul into the house, speaking to him kindly enough, although, in his shyness, he was always sadly at a loss what to say to any child, and the boy looked so sorrowful at parting with his friend that the clergyman was in doubt what manner of argument to employ by way of consolation.
He gave the little fellow a seat in the parlor, and went away to find Mrs. Prior, and inform her of the arrival of her new pupil. She hurried in at once, and her motherly kindness soon made Paul, in a measure, forget his loneliness and desolation.
Mrs. Mason and Rose had gone out to walk; so, for an hour or two, the little woman gave the boy her undivided attention. He refused dinner, saying they had dined on the road; but Mrs. Prior, out of the experience of her schoolmistress days, had great faith in the unlimited powers of children in the way of voraciousness, so she brought him all manner of quaint shaped cakes and crullers, red apples and nuts, until Paul was confused by the abundance, and sat with them on the handkerchief laid across his lap, staring ruefully at the pile, and really not knowing where to begin.
But what comforted Paul more than any thing was to hear himself addressed in his native language, which Mrs. Prior spoke with a sufficient degree of fluency.
"I have a little girl here," she said, "who will be a nice playmate for you."
"Is she a pretty little girl?" Paul asked; for he possessed a keen appreciation of beauty.
"Very pretty; her name is Rose, and she is nice and sweet, like her name."
Paul was interested at once, and poured forth a flood of questions with such volubility that it required all Mrs. Prior's knowledge of French to follow him. When he learned that it was the very Rose that Tom Hutchins had talked of so much, he felt at once that he had fallen among old friends, and his face brightened till its singular beauty became a marvel in the eyes of the minister's little wife.
Before Mrs. Mason and her daughter returned, Paul and his hostess had become the best friends imaginable. He grew very confidential, made her cry heartily with a few words which conveyed an account of his mother's death, and she brightened at the story of his rescue at sea, and in her gentle heart blessed the rough sailor of whom Paul spoke so lovingly. In the glow of these benevolent feelings she determined to do every thing in her power to make the child's residence in her family a happy episode in his life.
When she heard Mrs. Mason and little Rose in the hall, Mrs. Prior went out and asked them to come in.