ave
fancied Mary Parish, and more than one whisper had been listened to
that the young man was likely to have the Prince inheritance, after
all. He looked uncommonly well that evening, and the elder women could
not imagine that any damsel of his own age would consider him
slightingly. Nan had given a little shrug of impatience when she heard
his voice join the weaker ones in the parlor, and a sense of
discomfort that she never had felt before came over her suddenly. She
reminded herself that she must tell her aunt that very night that the
visit must come to an end. She had neglected her books and her drives
with the doctor altogether too long already.

XIX

FRIEND AND LOVER

In these summer days the young lawyer's thoughts had often been busy
elsewhere while he sat at the shaded office window and looked out upon
the river. The very housekeeping on the damaged ship became more
interesting to him than his law books, and he watched the keeper's
wife at her various employments on deck, or grew excited as he
witnessed the good woman's encounters with marauding small boys, who
prowled about hoping for chances of climbing the rigging or solving
the mysteries of the hold. It had come to be an uncommon event that a
square-rigged vessel should make the harbor of Dunport, and the elder
citizens ignored the deserted wharves, and talked proudly of the days
of Dunport's prosperity, convicting the railroad of its decline as
much as was consistent with their possession of profitable stock. The
younger people took the empty warehouses for granted, and listened to
their grandparents' stories with interest, if they did not hear them
too often; and the more enterprising among them spread their wings of
ambition and flew away to the larger cities or to the westward. George
Gerry had stayed behind reluctantly. He had neither enough desire for
a more active life, nor so high a purpose that he could disregard
whatever opposition lay in his way. Yet he was honestly dissatisfied
with his surroundings, and thought himself hardly used by a hindering
fate. He believed himself to be most anxious to get away, yet he was
like a ship which will not be started out of port by anything less
than a hurricane. There really were excuses for his staying at home,
and since he had stopped to listen to them they beguiled him more and
more, and his friends one by one commended his devotion to his mother
and sisters, and sometimes forgot to sympathize