e was Mr. Brower, sen. And at the
season of dinner-getting he lay on the couch in the dining-room, with
the weekly paper in his hand, himself engaged in running down the
column of stock prices. He glanced up once, when the words in the
kitchen jarred roughly on his aesthetic ear, and said:

"Seems to me, if I were you, I would remember that to-day is Sunday,
and not be quite so sharp with my tongue."

Then his solemn duty done, he returned to his mental comparison of
prices. Also, there was Dwight Brower, a young fellow of nineteen or
so, who acted unaccountably. Instead of lounging around, according
to his usual custom, hovering between piazza and dining-room,
whistling softly, now and then turning over the pile of old magazines
between whiles, in search of something with which to pass away the
time, he passed through the hall on his return from church, and
without exchanging a word with anyone went directly to his room. Once
there, he turned the key in the lock, and then, as though that did
not make him feel quite enough alone, he slipped the little brass
bolt under it, and then began pacing the somewhat long and somewhat
narrow floor. Up and down, up and down, with measured step and
perplexed, anxious face, hands in his pockets, and his whole air one
of abandonment to more serious thought than boys of nineteen usually
indulge.

What has happened to Dwight? Something that is not easily settled;
for as the chickens sputter in the oven below, and the water boils
off the potatoes, and the pudding is manufactured, and the cloud
deepens and glooms, he does not recover his free-and-easy air and
manner. He ceases his walk after a little, from sheer weariness, but
he thrusts out his arm and seizes a chair with the air of one who has
not time to be leisurely, and flings himself into it, and clasps his
arms on the table, and bends his head on his hands and thinks on.

The holy hours of the Sabbath afternoon waned. Mr. Brower exhausted
the stock column, read the record of deaths by way of doing a little
religious reading, tried a line or two of a religious poem and found
it too much for him, then rolled up a shawl for a sofa-pillow, put
the paper over his head to shield him from the October flies, and
went to sleep. Jennie went in and out setting the table, went to the
cellar for bread and cake and cream, went to the closet up-stairs for
a glass of jelly, went the entire round of weary steps necessary to
the getting ready t