He was hardly inside the door before he began to expatiate in the wildest manner on the subject of the beautiful deaf and dumb girl.

If ever man was in love with a child at first sight, he was that man.

As an artist, as a gentleman of refined tastes, and as the softest-hearted of male human beings, in all three capacities, he was enslaved by that little innocent, sad face.

He made the Doctor's head whirl again; he fairly stopped Mrs.Joyce's progress with the fancy jacket, as he sang the child's praises, and compared her face to every angel's face that had ever been painted, from the days of Giotto to the present time.

At last, when he had fairly exhausted his hearers and himself, he dashed abruptly out of the room, to cool down his excitement by a moonlight walk in the rectory garden.
"What a very odd man he is!" said Mrs.Joyce, taking up a dropped stitch in the fancy jacket.
"Valentine, my love, is the best creature in the world," rejoined the doctor, folding up the Rubbleford Mercury, and directing it for the post; "but, as I often used to tell his poor father (who never would believe me), a little cracked.