d in a
gentler tone than Mercy had before heard from her lips. "I shall have a
great deal of comfort out of it."

Then Mercy set the dish on a small table, and hung up the wreaths in the
windows. As she moved about the room lightly, now and then speaking in her
gay, light-hearted voice, Mrs. White thought to herself,--

"Steve was right. She is a wonderful cheery body." And, long after Mercy
had gone, she continued to think happily of the pleasant incident of the
fresh bright face and the sweet voice. For the time being, her jealous
distrust of the possible effect of these upon her son slumbered.

When Stephen entered his mother's room that night, his heart gave a sudden
bound at the sight of the green wreaths and the dish of ferns. He saw them
on fhe first instant after opening the door; he knew in the same instant
that the hands of Mercy Philbrick must have placed them there; but, also,
in that same brief instant came to him an involuntary impulse to pretend
that he did not observe them; to wait till his mother should have spoken
of them first, that he might know whether she were pleased or not by the
gift. So infinitely small are the first beginnings of the course of deceit
into which tyranny always drives its victim. It could not be called a
deceit, the simple forbearing to speak of a new object which one observed
in a room. No; but the motive made it a sure seed of a deceit: for when
Mrs. White said, "Why, Stephen, you haven't noticed the greens! Look in
the windows!" his exclamation of apparent surprise, "Why, how lovely!
Where did they come from?" was a lie. It did not seem so, however, to
Stephen. It seemed to him simply a politic suppression of a truth, to save
his mother's feelings, to avoid a possibility of a war of words. Mercy
Philbrick, under the same circumstances, would have replied,--

"Oh, yes, I saw them as soon as I came in. I was waiting for you to tell
me about them," and even then would have been tortured by her conscience,
because she did not say why she was waiting.

While his mother was telling him of Mercy's call, and of the report Marty
had brought back of the decorations of the rooms, Stephen stood with his
face bent over the ferns, apparently absorbed in studying each leaf
minutely; then he walked to the windows and examined the wreaths. He felt
himself so suddenly gladdened by these tokens of Mercy's presence, and by
his mother's evident change of feeling towards her, that he feared his