The minister protested that he was always enchanted to meet with an educated person who could not spell. It was, he said, the mark of a mind which catches so ardently at the soul of a word that it misses the form. "I have no doubt," he said, "that you might talk with a person a hundred times, and comprehend his character perfectly, yet not be able to tell the color of his eyes nor the shape of his nose. You could also go unerringly to a place you had once visited, though you could not direct a person there. You do not gather your knowledge like corn in the ear, but in the golden grain; and when anybody wants the cob, you have to go searching about in waste places for it."
Mr. Yorke came in, and presently Mrs. Yorke, with a little sleep-mistiness hanging yet about her.
"Where have you been, auntie?" cried Eugene Cleveland, running to her. He had his hands full of dandelion curls, which he began hanging in her ears, having thus adorned the young ladies.
"I have been to the land where dreams grow on trees," she said softly.
"Mr. Griffeth says that I am a little man," the child announced, with an air of consequence. The remark had been made an hour before, and was not yet forgotten. The lad had indeed an exceedingly good opinion of himself, and never forgot a word of praise.
Clara called him to her. "You are no more a man," she said, "than potato-balls are potatoes."
He sobered instantly, and went about for some time with a very forlorn countenance. After awhile, when she had forgotten the remark, he came back to her. "Cousin Clara, do potato-balls ever grow into potatoes?" he asked anxiously.
In the evening the Universalist deputation arrived, and took their minister away with them.
"Now, Pat, you mark my words," said Betsey, as she saw the family stand on the moonlight veranda to watch their visitor down the avenue: "that man will marry one of the Yorke girls."
Betsey considered the speedy marriage of the young ladies a consummation devoutly to be wished.