Miss Belinda Makes Conditions
“For of the soul the body form doth take, For soul is form, and doth the body make.”
Miss Belinda was somewhat taken aback at the proposal of Mr. Sylvester to receive Paula into his own house. She had not anticipated any such result to her efforts; the utmost she had expected was a couple of years or so of instruction in some state Academy. Nor did she know whether she was altogether pleased at the turn affairs were taking. From all she had heard, her niece Ona was, to say the least, a frivolous woman, and Paula had a mind too noble to be subjected to the deteriorating influence of a shallow and puerile companionship. Then the child had great beauty; Mr. Sylvester who ought to be a judge in such matters had declared it so, and what might not the adulation of the thoughtless and the envy of the jealous, do towards belittling a nature as yet uncontaminated.
“We ought to think twice,” she said to Miss Abby with some bitterness, who on the contrary never having thought once was full of the most childish hopes concerning a result which she considered with a certain secret complacency she would not have acknowledged for the world, had been very much furthered by her own wise recommendations to Mr. Sylvester in the beginning of his visit. Yet notwithstanding her doubts Miss Belinda allowed such preparations to be made as she considered necessary, and even lent her hand which was deft enough in its way, to the task of enlarging the child’s small wardrobe. As for Paula, the thought of visiting the great city with the dear friend whose image had stood in her mind from early childhood as the impersonation of all that was noble, generous and protecting, was more than joyful; it was an