Dr. Leslie was mindful of his responsibilities, and knew more of his
ward than was ever suspected. He was eager that the best district
school teacher who could be found should be procured for the Thacher
and Dyer neighborhood, and in many ways he took pains that the little
girl should have all good things that were possible. He only laughed
when her grandmother complained that Nan would not be driven to
school, much less persuaded, and that she was playing in the brook, or
scampering over the pastures when she should be doing other things.
Mrs. Thacher, perhaps unconsciously, had looked for some trace of the
father's good breeding and gentlefolk fashions, but this was not a
child who took kindly to needlework and pretty clothes. She was
fearlessly friendly with every one; she did not seem confused even
when the minister came to make his yearly parochial visitation, and as
for the doctor, he might have been her own age, for all humility she
thought it necessary to show in the presence of this chief among her
elders and betters. Old Mrs. Thacher gave little pulls at her
granddaughter's sleeves when she kept turning to see the doctor in
sermon-time, but she never knew how glad he was, or how willingly he
smiled when he felt the child's eyes watching him as a dog's might
have done, forcing him to forget the preaching altogether and to
attend to this dumb request for sympathy. One blessed day Dr. Leslie
had waited in the church porch and gravely taken the child's hand as
she came out; and said that he should like to take her home with him;
he was going to the lower part of the town late in the afternoon and
would leave her then at the farm-house.
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