By the time Professor Valeyon had remounted the granite steps, he was quite ready to do justice to his breakfast. Cornelia came singing down-stairs, with a full-blown tea-rose in her hair, and looking as if she had already breakfasted upon the greater part of the day's sunshine. She reported Sophie to be awake and comfortable, so the gentleman climbed up-stairs and shuffled into her peaceful, rose-colored room to give her a morning kiss. The Lord's Prayer glowed forth as brightly from the wall as if it had been pronounced for the first time that day.
"Well, heard all about my new pupil from Cornelia, I suppose?" said papa, when the kiss had been given, sitting down by the bedside, and holding his daughter's pale, slender hand in his own.
"He who came last evening? No, I've not seen Neelie to speak to her, since he was here. What is he to be taught?"
"Wants to be a minister," replied the professor, rubbing his beard. "Shall do what I can for him, because he's the son of a former friend, now dead. I'm afraid he won't do, though. Needs a good deal besides Hebrew and history."
"But you can give him all he does need, papa," rejoined Sophie, with serene faith in the old gentleman's infallibility.
"I don't know," returned he, his eyes resting upon the Lord's Prayer. "I don't know," he repeated, turning them to his daughter's transparent face, which seemed almost an incarnation of the divine words. "I think, my dear, that you could put some ideas into his head that would do him more good than any thing I can give him;" and he smiled gravely upon her.
"All right, papa," said Sophie, gayly, with a tender kindling of her soft, gray eyes. "Nothing could make me happier than to do good to somebody. As soon as I get well enough, I'll take him under my charge."
Her manner was playful, but there was a vibration in her tone which caught the professor's ear, and conveyed to him the idea that there was an unseen depth of yearning and passionate desire to be something more than an invalid, selfish and helpless, during her earthly life; an inheritance, perhaps, of the apostolic spirit which had played a not inconsiderable part in the history of his own life. And surely, he may have thought, there never was human being better qualified than she to inspire to high and pure simplicity of life and thought, were it merely by the example of her own. And would it not be a strange and beautiful thing, if this beloved daughter of his should be the means of turning to worthier and truer ambitions a man whom, of all others, he had reason to wish honored and respected among mankind! It was a very alluring thought, and the professor quite lost himself for a few moments in the contemplation of it. He did not reflect, and Sophie could not know, that there might be danger in the prosecution of such a scheme; for, all the knowledge which a young girl like her can have or impart, must find its ultimate origin in the heart. But then, again, the matter had taken no definite or practical shape in his mind as yet, and things which in the abstract may wear an appearance of being highly desirable often put on quite a different look when presented in concrete form. This would be especially the case with a man like Professor Valeyon, who was half a dreamer, and half a practical, common-sensible individual. With Sophie, however, whose whole life was necessarily a tissue of delicate and high-wrought theories, there was no safeguard of the kind to be relied upon.
No more conversation was had upon the subject at that time. The professor went down to his breakfast, and, having disposed of it with good appetite, and smoked his morning-pipe with quiet satisfaction, Michael brought Dolly and the wagon round to the front door, the old gentleman clambered in, and off they rattled to Abbie's boarding-house.
This "Abbie," as she was called in the village—indeed, not more than one in a hundred knew her other name—had long been an institution among the townspeople. When she first became a resident was uncertain: some said more, some less than twenty years ago. Certain it was, at all events, that she had grown, during her sojourn there, from a young and comely, though sober-faced woman, to considerably more than middle age; though time had perhaps used her less kindly than most women in her situation in life, which is saying a good deal. No one could tell where she came from, or what her previous life had been. She had first made her appearance as purchaser of the house in which she had ever since lived, and kept boarders. She was uncommunicative, without seeming offensively reserved; quietly tenacious of her rights, though far from grasping or aggressive, and was endowed with decided executive ability. She had made a most unexceptionable landlady; one or two of her boarders had been with her almost since the inception of her enterprise; while all the better class of transient visitors to the village, which had a moderate popularity as a summer resort, made their first application for rooms to her.