The Fairchilds by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

EBEN FAIRCHILD was not Mrs. Fairchild's own son, as my readers will probably have understood from the last chapter. Those who have read the former volumes of "The Boonville Series" will recollect the little English boy whom Jeduthun Cooke, the miller, rescued from his cruel relatives. At that time Eben Wright, as he was then called, was only seven years old-a pretty, slender, delicate little fellow; too peaked, Grandma Badger said, ever to amount to much. After staying about for some time, now with one kind family and now with another, Eben was first apprenticed to, and then adopted by, a respectable farmer who lived between Boonville and the Springs. Mr. Fairchild had only one living child, a little girl named Flora, two years older than Eben.

A greater contrast could hardly be imagined than that between Flora Fairchild and her little adopted brother. Flora was as stout, bouncing, and healthy as Eben was the reverse: a well-grown girl, with black eyes, and somewhat scowling black brows above them, a dark but clear and healthy complexion, and abundant black hair. Flora was generous, truthful, and kind-hearted, but she had "a temper of her own," as the girls said, and was very much governed by her impulses, which, to do her justice, were usually good. Eben was small of his age, thin and pale, with light hair and wide, grave blue eyes. People wondered how Flora could relish having a strange child come into the family where she had so long reigned alone, and predicted that she would make that little fellow "see sights. " For their part they thought it was a foolish move, and pitied the poor delicate boy.