A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia. Amanda M. Douglas

Henry called his babe little one, child, and daughter, and the mother was too wise to flaunt the name in his face. She had great faith in the future.

      "For if you keep stirring your rising continually, you will have no good bread," she said. "Many things are best left alone, until the right time."

      She dressed the child quaintly, and she grew sweeter every day. But they talked about the son they were to have, and other daughters. Little Phil wrote occasionally. He was studying in an English school, but he had spells of homesickness now and then, and his uncle said if he learned smartly he should take a voyage to America when he was older. Nevitt Grange was a great, beautiful place with a castle and a church and peasants working in the fields. And he was to go up to London to see the king.

      One damp, drizzling November night Philemon Henry came home with so severe a cold that he could hardly speak. He had been on the dock all day, supervising the unloading of a vessel of choice goods. He could eat no supper. Bessy made him a brew of choice herbs and had him hold his feet in hot water while she covered him with a blanket and made a steam by pouring some medicaments on a hot brick. Then he was bundled up in bed, but all night long he was restless, muttering and tumbling about. He would get up in the morning, but before he was dressed he fell across the bed like a log, and Bessy in great fright summoned the doctor.

      He had never been ill before, and for a few days no one dreamed of danger. Then his brother James was summoned, and his clerk from the warehouse, and there were grave consultations. Bessy's buoyant nature could not at first take in the seriousness of the case. Of course he would recover. He was so large and strong, and not an old man.

      Alas! In a brief fortnight Philemon Henry lay dead in the house, and Bessy was so stunned that she, too, seemed half bereft of life. She had loved him sincerely, and for months they had forgotten their unfortunate difference over the child's name. And when he was laid in the burying ground beside his first wife, there was a strange feeling that he no longer belonged to her, and she was all alone; that somehow the bond had snapped that united her with the Friends.

      Philemon Henry had made a will in the lucid intervals of his fever. His brother was appointed guardian of the child and trustee of the property. To Bessy was left an income in no wise extravagant, so long as she remained a widow. The remainder was to be invested for the child, who was not to come into possession until she was twenty-one. She and her mother were to spend half of every year on the farm, and in case of the mother's death she was to be consigned to the sole guardianship of her uncle. There were a few outside bequests and remembrances to faithful clerks.

      The other trustee was Philemon's business partner, who had lately returned from Holland. If Friend Henry had lived a few years longer he would have been a rich man, but in process of settlement his worldly wealth shrank greatly.

      Uncle James proposed that the house should be sold, and she be free from the expense of maintaining it.

      "Nay," she protested. "Surely thou hast not the heart to deprive me of the little joy remaining to my life. The place is dear to me, for I can see him in every room, and the garden he tended with so much care. Thou wilt kill me by insisting, and a murder will be on thy hands."

      She spent the winter and spring in the house. One day in every week she went to cousin Wetherill's.

      The elder lady, a stickler for fashion, suggested that she should wear mourning.

      "I like not dismal sables," declared Bessy. "And it is not the custom of Friends. I shall no doubt do many things I should be restricted from were my husband alive, but I will honor him in this."

      She attended the Friends' meeting on Sunday afternoon, but the evening assemblies that had convened at the Henrys' once a fortnight were transferred to another house. And in summer, although she went to the Henry farm, she made visits in town and resumed some of her old friendships.

      The next autumn there came an opportunity to sell the house and the business, and James Henry urged it.

      "Then her home will be here with us," he said to his wife. "Philemon was anxious to have the child brought up under the godly counsel of Friends, and she will be less likely to stray. I think she is not a whole-hearted Friend, and her relatives are worldly people."

      But when the place was sold she went at once to Madam Wetherill's. And she began to lay aside her Quaker plainness and frequented Christ Church; indeed, though she was not very gay as yet, she was a great attraction at the house of her relative.

      Before the summer ended an event occurred that gave her still greater freedom of action. This was a legacy from England left to the Wardour branch in the New World, and as there were but three heirs, her portion was a very fair one. There was some talk of Madam Wetherill taking her to England, but the cold weather came on, and there seemed so many things to settle. That winter she went over to the world's people altogether.

      "I think, Bessy, you should make a will," said Madam Wetherill as they were talking seriously one day. "It will not bring about death any sooner. I have had mine made this fifteen years, and am hale and hearty. But, if anything should happen, the child will be delivered over to the Henrys and brought up in the drab-colored mode of belief. It seems hard for little ones so full of life."

      "She must have her free choice of religion. Having tried both," and Bessy gave a dainty smile, "I like my own Church the best. If she should grow up and fall in love with a Friend, she can do as she likes. There are not many as manly and handsome as was Philemon. Indeed I think they make their lives too sad-colored, too full of work. I should go wild if I lost my little one, but Lois Henry goes about as if nothing had happened. I found it a luxury to grieve for Philemon. There is wisdom in thy suggestion."

      A lawyer was sent for and the matter laid before him. She could appoint another guardian now that she had money of her own to leave the child, and she could consign it part of the time to that guardian's care.

      There was much consultation before the matter was settled. And though, when the time came, she moved some chests of goods out to the farm and made a pretense of settling, she and Madam Wetherill soon after went up to New York and were gone three full months.

      James Henry found himself circumvented in a good many ways by woman's wit. There was no dispute between them, and much as he objected to the ways of the world's people, he had no mind to defraud his small niece out of a considerable fortune that might reasonably come to her. Indeed he began to be a little afraid of Bessy Henry's willfulness. And she might marry and leave all of her money to a new set of children.

      But fate ordered it otherwise. Bessy went for a visit to Trenton, and though she was rarely separated from her darling, this time she left her behind. She did not return as soon as she expected, on account of a feverish illness which would be over in a few days, her friends insisted, but instead developed into the scourge of smallpox, the treatment of which was not well understood at that time, and though she was healthy ordinarily, the bleeding so reduced her strength that she sank rapidly and in a week had followed her husband.

      Madam Wetherill was cut to the very heart by the sad incident, for she loved Bessy as if she had been her own daughter, and she was tenderly attached to baby Primrose, who was too little to realize all she had lost.

      When Friend Henry preferred his claim to his brother's child, he was met by some very decided opposition. In the first place the child had been christened in the church, and was, according to her mother's wishes, to be left in Madam Wetherill's charge for six months every year and be instructed in the tenets of her own church, and to remain perfectly free to make her choice when she was eighteen. If her mother's wishes could not be carried out, her fortune was to revert to Madam Wetherill, and she would inherit only what her father bequeathed her.

      "I cannot believe my brother was knowing to this nefarious scheme!" cried Friend Henry in a temper. "And I always thought Primrose a most ungodly name. It was his wish she should become a Friend."

      "And if your son marries among the world's people and leaves the faith what will you do?" asked Madam Wetherill.

      "I should disown him," was the hasty reply.

      "Then