een, Jerome
Edwards?" cried his mother. She cast a sharp look at his parcel, but
said nothing about it. Jerome laid it on top of the old desk which
had belonged to his father. "I have been over to Dale," he replied;
"I didn't start very early."

His aunt Belinda looked at him amiably. She had not changed much. Her
face, shaded by her long curls, had that same soft droop as of a
faded flower. Once past her bloom of the flesh, there was, in a woman
so little beset by storms of the spirit as Belinda Lamb, little
further change possible until she dropped entirely from her tree of
life. She looked at Jerome with the amiable light of a smile rather
than a smile itself, and said, with her old, weak, but clinging
pounce upon disturbing trifles, "Why, Jerome, you 'ain't been all
this time gettin' to Dale an' back?"

"I didn't hurry," replied Jerome, coldly, drawing a chair up to the
supper-table. He had always a sensation of nervous impatience with
this mild, negatively sweet woman which he could not overcome, though
he felt shamed by it. He preferred to see Paulina Maria, though
between her and himself a covert antagonism survived the open one of
his boyhood--at least, he could dislike her without disliking
himself.

The candle-light fell full upon Paulina Maria's face, which was even
more transparent than formerly; so transfused was her clear profile
by the candle-light that the outlines seemed almost to waver and be
lost. She was knitting a fine white cotton stocking in an intricate
pattern, and did not look at Jerome, or speak to him, beyond her
first nod of recognition when he entered.

Presently, however, Jerome turned to her. "How is Henry?" he
inquired.

"About the same," she replied, in her clear voice, which was
unexpectedly loud, and seemed to have a curious after-tone.

"His eyes are no worse, then?"

"No worse, and no better."

"Can't he do any more than he did last year?" asked Mrs. Edwards.

"No, he can't. He hasn't been able to do a stitch on shoes since last
Thanksgiving. He can't do anything but sit at the window and knit
plain knittin'. I don't know how he would get along, if I hadn't
showed him how to do that. I believe he'd go crazy."

"Don't you think that last stuff Doctor Prescott put in his eyes did
him any good?" asked Mrs. Edwards.

"No, I don't. He didn't think it would, himself. He said all there
was to do was to go to Boston and see that great doctor there and
have an operation, an'