"
Then I blushed under the girl's clear, trustful gaze.
"You don't think I mind what the children talk!" she said.
Every day Rebecca appealed more and more, unconsciously, to what was most
generous and grave and heedful in my nature. She seemed to be demanding
of me, with mute, gentle importunity, to make real my ideal of life, to
be what I knew she believed me to be. Her faith in my superior wisdom and
goodness, her slow, timid way of confiding in me, with tears and blushes
even; it was all very flattering, very captivating to one who had but so
lately risen to occupy the pedestal of a moral instructress, and "my
child," "my dear child," I said to her in many private discourses, with
more than the tranquil grace and dignity with which such terms had been
applied to me, only a year before, by the august principal of Mt. B----
Seminary.
Rebecca read my books, and I drew her out to talk with me about them. She
prepared her lessons, with me, out of school. She knew that she might
come whenever she chose to my little room at the Ark, which the chimney
kept comfortably warm, and often I heard her footsteps on the stairs and
her gentle knock at the door.
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