She had not thought of them for years, but now she felt impelled to look after them.

The dim sea odors which still clung to them penetrated to the very inmost haunts of memory, and called up that longing for the ocean breeze which those who have once breathed and salted their blood with it never get over, and which makes the sweetest inland airs seem to them at last tame and tasteless.

She held a tigershell to her ear, and listened to that low, sleepy murmur, whether in the sense or in the soul we hardly know, like that which had so often been her lullaby,--a memory of the sea, as Landor and Wordsworth have sung.
"You are getting to look like your father," Aunt Silence said one day; "I never saw it before.

I always thought you took after old Major Gideon Withers.

Well, I hope you won't come to an early grave like poor Charles,--or at any rate, that you may be prepared." It did not seem very likely that the girl was going out of the world at present, but she looked Miss Silence in the face very seriously, and said, "Why not an early grave, Aunt, if this world is such a bad place as you say it is ?" "I'm afraid you are not fit for a better." She wondered if Silence Withers and Cynthia Badlam were just ripe for heaven.
For some months Miss Cynthia Badlam, who, as was said, had been an habitual visitor at The Poplars, had lived there as a permanent resident.