painful trials, to one like her, attended her arrival in the city
and entrance upon the duties assumed. But daily the trials grew
less, and she toiled on in the fulfilment of her contract with Mr.
Green, happy under the ever present consciousness that she had saved
her father's property, and kept their homestead as the gathering
place of the family. At the end of three months, she came back and
spent a week. How her young heart bounded with joy at the great
change apparent in every thing about the house and farm, but, most
of all, at the change in her father. He was not so light of word and
smilingly cheerful as in former times, but he was sober, perfectly
sober; and she felt that the kiss with which he welcomed her brief
return, was purer than it had ever been.

On the very day Mary came back, she called over to see Mr. Green,
and paid him thirty-seven dollars on account of the loan, for which
he gave her a receipt. Then he had many questions to ask about her
situation at Lowell, and how she bore her separation from home, to
all of which she gave cheerful answers, and, in the end, repeated
her thanks for the opportunity he had given her to be of such great
service to her father.

Mr. Green had a son who, during his term at college, exhibited
talents of so decided a character that his father, after some
deliberation, concluded to place him under the care of an eminent
lawyer in Boston. In this position he had now been for two years,
and was about applying for admission to the bar. As children, Henry
Green and Mary Bacon had been to the same school together, and, as
children, they were much attached to each other. Their intercourse,
as each grew older, was suspended by the absence of Henry at
college, and by other circumstances that removed the two families