That evening, after the little people were asleep, the spinster and the Doctor conferred together in regard to Adèle. It was agreed between them that she should enter at once upon her school duties, and that particular inquiry concerning her religious beliefs, particular instruction on that score,—further than what belonged to the judicious system of Miss Onthank,—should be deferred for the present. At the same time the Doctor enjoined upon his sister the propriety of commencing upon the next Saturday evening the usual instructions in the Shorter Catechism, and of insisting upon punctual attendance upon the family devotions. The good Doctor hoped by these appointed means gradually to ripen the religious sensibilities of the little stranger, so that she might be prepared for that stern denunciation of those follies of the Romish Church amid which she had been educated, and that it would be his duty at no distant day to declare to her.
The spinster had been so captivated by a certain air of modish elegance in Adèle as to lead her almost to forget the weightier obligations of her Christian duty toward her. She conceived that she would find in her a means of recovering some influence over Reuben,—never doubting that the boy would be attracted by her frolicsome humor, and would be eager for her companionship. It was possible, moreover, that there might be some appeal to the boy's jealousies, when he found the favors which he had spurned were lavished upon Adèle. It was therefore in the best of temper and with the airiest of hopes (though not altogether spiritual ones) that Miss Eliza conducted the discussion with the Doctor. In two things only they had differed, and in this each had gained and each lost a point. The Doctor utterly refused to conform his pronunciation to the rigors which Miss Eliza prescribed; for him Adèle should be always and only Adaly. On the other hand, the parson's exactions in regard to sundry modifications of the little girl's dress miscarried: the spinster insisted upon all the furbelows as they had come from the hands of the French modiste; and in this she left the field with flying colors.
The next day Doctor Johns wrote to his friend Maverick, announcing the safe arrival of his child at Ashfield, and spoke in terms which were warm for him, of the interest which both his sister and himself felt in her welfare. "He was pained," he said, "to perceive that she spoke almost with gayety of serious things, and feared greatly that her keen relish for the beauties and delights of this sinful world, and her exuberant enjoyment of mere temporal blessings, would make it hard to wean her from them and to centre her desires upon the eternal world. But, my friend, all things are possible with God: and I shall diligently pray that she may return to you, in a few years, sobered in mind, and a self-denying missionary of the true faith."
XXI.
No such event could take place in Ashfield as the arrival of this young stranger at the parsonage, without exciting a world of talk up and down the street. There were stories that she came of a vile Popish family, and there were those who gravely believed that the poor little creature had made only a hair-breadth escape from the thongs of the Inquisition. There were few even of those who knew that she was the daughter of a wealthy gentleman, now domiciled in France, and an old friend of the Doctor's, who did not look upon her with a tender interest, as one miraculously snatched by the hands of the good Doctor from the snares of perdition. The gay trappings of silks and ribbons in which she paced up the aisle of the meeting-house upon her first Sunday, under the patronizing eye of the stern spinster, were looked upon by the more elderly worshippers—most of all by the mothers of young daughters—as the badges of the Woman of Babylon, and as fit belongings to those accustomed to dwell in the tents of wickedness. Even Dame Tourtelot, in whose pew the face of Miss Almira waxes yellow between two great saffron bows, commiserates the poor heathen child who has been decked like a lamb for the sacrifice. "I wonder Miss Eliza don't pull off them ribbons from the little minx," said she, as she marched home in the "intermission," locked commandingly to the arm of the Deacon.
"Waäl, I s'pose they're paid for," returns the Deacon.
"What's that to do with it, Tourtelot?"
"Waäl, Huldy, we do pootty much all we can for Almiry in that line: this 'ere Maverick, I guess, doos the same. What's the odds, arter all?"
"Odds enough, Tourtelot," as the poor man found before bedtime: he had no flip.
The Elderkins, however, were more considerate. Very early after her arrival, Adèle had found her way to their homestead, under the guidance of Miss Eliza, and by her frank, demonstrative manner had established herself at once in the affections of the whole family. The Squire, indeed, had rallied the parson not a little, in his boisterous, hearty fashion, upon his introduction of such a dangerous young Jesuit into so orthodox a parish.