e neighbors began to say that there never
was a more dutiful son or a more attentive and affectionate brother.
Some half suspected the reason of the reformation,--no one so quick as
Squire Clamp, who had reasons of his own, as the reader knows, for
wishing delay. After a few months had passed, he thought it would be
dangerous to let the schemes of the widow go on longer without
interruption, and accordingly prepared to make a step towards his own
long-cherished purpose.

CHAPTER XI.

One afternoon, about six months after the opening of our story,
Mrs. Kinloch and her son were talking together concerning the progress
of his suit. He complained that he was no nearer the point than on the
first day he and Mildred rode out together. "It was like rounding Cape
Horn," he said, "where a ship might lie twenty days and drift back as
fast as she got ahead by tacking." In spite of all his attention and
kindness, Mildred was merely courteous in return;--he could not get
near her. If she smiled, it seemed as though it was from behind a
grating, as in a nunnery. Her pulse was always firm; and if her eye
was soft, it was steady as the full moon. He didn't believe she had
any blood in her. If she was in love with that fellow, she kept it
pretty closely covered up.

Mrs. Kinloch encouraged her son to persevere; she was sure he had not
been skilful. "Mildred," she said, "was not to be won with as little
trouble as a silly, low-bred girl, like--like Lucy, for instance."

"What the deuse are you always bringing up Lucy to me for?" said the
dutiful son.

"Don't speak so!"

"Confound it! I must. You keep a fellow shut up here for six months,
going to meeting five times a week; you give him no chance to work off
his natural spirits, and the devil in him will break out
somewhere. It's putting a stopper in a volcano; if you don't allow a
little fire and smoke, you're bound to have an earthquake."

After this philosophical digression, the first topic was resumed, and
Mrs. Kinloch gave the young man some counsel, drawn from her own
experience or observation, touching the proper mode of awakening and
cultivating the tender passion. It is not every mother that does so
much for her son, but then few mothers have so urgent a motive.

"_What_ was it that she advised him to do," did you ask? Really,
I've quite forgotten; and I am sure Mrs. Kinloch forgot also, at least
for that day, because something occurred which turned her thoughts f