The little girl has a profound respect for the Doctor; his calmness, his
equanimity, his persistent zeal in his work, would alone provoke it. But
she sees, furthermore,--what she does not see always in "Aunt Eliza,"--a
dignity of character that is proof against all irritating humors; then,
too, he has appeared to Adele a very pattern of justice. She had taken
exceptions, indeed, when, on one or two rare occasions, he had reached
down the birch rod which lay upon the same hooks with the sword of Major
Johns, in the study, and had called in Reuben for extraordinary
discipline; but the boy's manifest acquiescence in the affair when his
cool moments came next morning, and the melancholy air of kindness with
which the Doctor went in to kiss him a goodnight, after such regimen,
kept alive her faith in the unvarying justice of the parson. Therefore
she tried hard to torture her poor little heart into a feeling of its
own blackness, (for that it was very black she had the good man's
averment,) she listened gravely to all he had to urge, and when he had
fairly overburdened her with the enumeration of her wicked, worldly
appetites, she could only say, with a burst of emotion,--