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But she never wore any ornaments, for the best of reasons—she never had them, being held still as the household baby, a creature by no means “too bright and good” for paint-boxes, illustrated books, and gay pictures, but quite too young for trinkets.

To-day, however, her father hegan to think of something proper for this damsel of seventeen; the eternal fitness of things pursued him with that fact, and he remembered that Will, who had betaken himself to China in this past summer—it being now October—had left in his hands a certain commission to this end.

“Buy Dolly something stunning for her birthday, Sir, and take the spoils out of my allowance. Tell her I left it for her. I’m I late for the steamer, or I’d buy it myself.”

So Mr. Vane took the next train for the city, and when the birthday came, Dolly found on her plate a wonderful morocco box “from Will,” bearing on its snowy satin lining a necklace and armlets of turquoises set in dead gold; but her dimples and blushes over the charming toys deepened into speechless delight when, before dinner, papa hung over her cream-white corded silk jacket a slender but sparkling chain of deep-tinted rubies, to which hung a great sapphire set in milky pearls.

Oh, Dolly! was it hecause that little head was so child-like, so simple, that these jewels were only pretty toys, and did not set thee up in thine own conceit? For what are jewels to a goose? Nevertheless, Dolly liked the shining things. She liked their lustre and their hue, the bit of color added to her colorless attire, and their unfading splendors; for her flowers died in her hands and her hair before they had done more than scant service, and it pained her foolish little soul to see them droop and pale so soon. If Katy had still been by, her common-sense might have curbed Dolly’s delight. She would have priced the trinkets and watched over them with careful eye, and done her best to impress their owner with their value and the terror of their loss; but this vigilant monitress was gone. Parson Preston was laid up in his bed with rheumatic fever, and the mother could not do without Katy, all the more that at the rectory there now sojourned a young minister from New York, come to take Mr. Preston’s place, and it was impossible for one woman to look after a sick man and a well one too; so Katy went home.

Parson Preston was ill a long time, veryill, and Mr. Vane and Dolly had the kindest hearts in the world, and ample powers of expressing them; so the road from one house to the other was traversed often by the bearers of kindly messages and offerings; fruit, dainties from Roxy’s skillful hands, old wine from Mr. Vane’s cellar. All these the servants carried. But it was Dolly who arranged and carried the flowers, sheltered safely from wind and rain under her long cloak of gentian blue, whose rose-lined hood, half slipping from her gold-brown coronet of hair made her a living picture, a delight to the eyes. Not to Mr. Preston’s eyes, for he was as cross as fever and rheumatism can make any tortured mortal, and if the host of seraphim had appeared before him, he would probably have growled at their light in his eyes; but to this temporary pastor, this youth from New York, this elegent being whose broadcloth, eyeglass, manners, and customs were the theme of every Basset tea table already—to the Reverend Augustus Rycker, Dolly appeared as a vision in the desert. Now it would be according to general usage if I were to present this young man, who was always well dressed, fastidious, elegant of manner, and charming of aspect, as a piteous idiot, who always said, “Aw, yaas,” “Really, now,” and also an accomplished and heartless male flirt. It is true, these traits are not really compatible; it takes a certain acute quality of mind to flirt successfully, either in man or woman; the most desperate characters of that sort I have ever known relied neither on beauty nor youth to beguile their captives, for they had neither. Still, in novels and stories one
meets so often the impossible in fact that I must take the risk of being natural at my own cost. So I must say that Mr. Rycker was really an intelligent, well-educated young man, thoroughly a gentleman, honorable and good. If he was a little conceited, tolerably dogmatic, and a very High Churchman, what of that? These are bagatelles necessary to humanity. How we should all hate a perfect man, even Doily! But Dolly did not hate Mr. Rycker. She incautiously told Katy that she thought he was “a duck,” at which the little preceptress turned pale directly, and was about to give Dolly a large apple from the tree of knowledge at once, and force her to eat it, had not the duck himself opportunely entered and begun a gentle ministerial quack about Christmas decorations, which distracted Katy’s mind, till her father impatiently called her, and Dolly left, having escaped, ignorantly, a sharp lesson, and perhaps a useful one. But if Dolly liked the young minister, what was the harm, so long as she staid at liking? He was very different from the youths of Basset, who ignored grammar and talked broad Yankee, who were honest, hard-handed sons of toil, or simpering creatures behind a counter—Basset, like most New England towns, being depopulated by that dragon the Great West. In fact, if Dolly, brought up from her youth in refined and fastidious retirement, had ever met these beings in society, they would have regarded her either as a lily of the field, lovely, adorable, indeed, but quite useless, or as an unattainable angel from a fashion plate; or even if her simple soul had accepted them calmly, as a botanist does fungi, with some curiosity but no surprise, they would have gone no further—the farmers repelled by the uselessness of the blossom, the mercantile youths by its expense. However, she never met them. She did not know how to sew, and therefore never went to the weekly “circle” of the village, and Mr. Rycker, handsome, intelligent, polished, was really the first gentleman into whose society she had ever fallen. Moreover, he was her minister, and Dolly was a pious little soul, who said her prayers, as a bird sings, from a heavenward impulse of grateful joy, and who went to church as a happy duty, lifting up her voice in chant and psalm with a clear childish treble that was shrill for want of soul or sorrow. Are these convertible terms? She always listened to Mr. Preston’s nasal and monotonous homilies with patience and perseverance; she fixed her eyes on his pasty countenance and round head, with its red fringe of hair, with perfect politeness and attention. But here was the head of a young saint, with dark sad eyes and clustering raven hair, with lips from whose tranquil curves flowed Words of picturesque splendor, ardent faith, pure devotion; whose flowing snowy robes, tinged by the rose light of a painted window, seemed to be typical wings flushed with heavenly dawn. She forgot how ugly those pink shadows had seemed to her, cast against Mr. Preston’s frantically disheveled locks.