“’If I could only be sure I wasn’t going against your best interests to let you come,’ said she.

“‘Oh, Miss Penstock,’ exclaimed I, ’don’t think so—­don’t dare to say no for that reason; for I tell you, I shall go away to some other town with Nat if you don’t take us; there is no other house here that would do; think how much better it would be for Nat to stay among friends.’

“‘It’s lucky I am their guardian,’ said Aunt Abby, with an unconscious defiance in her tone.  ’There can’t anybody hinder their doing anything I am willing to have them do.  My brother wanted to have Mr. Maynard, too; but I told him no; I’d either be whole guardian or none.’

“’I think good Aunt Abby had had a dim foreboding that Mr. Maynard’s kindness might take a shape which it would be hard to submit to.  Great as her gratitude was, her family pride resented dictation, and resented also the implied slight to poor Nat.  As I look back now, I can see that, except for this reaction of feeling, she never would have consented so easily to my undertaking all I undertook, in going to housekeeping alone with that helpless child, on four hundred dollars a year.  Before night it was all settled, and Miss Penstock went home two hours before her time, ’so stirred up, somehow,’ as she said, ’to think of those blessed children’s coming to live in my house, I couldn’t see to thread a needle.’  After tea Mr. Maynard came again:  Aunt Abby saw him alone.  When she came up-stairs she had been crying, but her lips were closed more rigidly than I ever saw them.  Aunt Abby could be as determined as Mr. Maynard.  All she said to me of the interview was, ’I don’t know now as he’ll really give in that he can’t have things as he wants to.  For all his laughing and for all his goodness, I don’t believe he is any too comfortable to live with.  I shouldn’t wonder if he never spoke to one of us again.’

“But Mr. Maynard was too well-bred a man for any such pettiness as that.  His resentment showed itself merely in a greater courtesy than ever, combined with a careful absence of all inquiries as to our plans.  It hurt me very much, for I knew how it would have hurt dear papa.  But I knew, too, that I was right and Mr. Maynard was wrong, and that comforted me.

“Four weeks from the day papa was buried, the pretty parsonage was locked up, cold, dark, empty.  Aunt Abby had gone with little Abby to her new home, and Nat and I were settled at Miss Penstock’s.  The night before we moved, Mr. Maynard left a note at the door for me.  It contained five hundred dollars and these words:—­

“’Miss Dora will not refuse to accept this from one who hoped to be her father.’

“But I could not take it.  I sent it back to him with a note like this:—­

“’Dear Mr. Maynard:—­I shall never forget that you were willing to be my father, and I shall always be grateful to you; but I cannot take money from one who is displeased with me for doing what I think right.  I promise you, however, for papa’s sake and for Nat’s, that if I ever need help I will ask it of you, and not of any one else.’