e broke down and cried, and
complained that the poor boy hadn't eat any supper, and she was
afraid he'd be sick. Abel, sitting near her, snivelled softly for
sympathy, not fairly comprehending her cause for tears. When she
stopped weeping, and took up her knitting-work again, he drew a sigh
of relief and fell to eating an apple.

As for Elmira, she tried to comfort her mother, and she had an
anxious curiosity about Jerome and his call at the Merritts'; but
Lawrence Prescott was coming that evening.

Presently Ann heard her singing up-stairs in her chamber, whither she
had gone to curl her hair and change her gown.

"I'm glad somebody can sing," muttered Ann; but in the depths of her
heart was a wish that her son, instead of her daughter, could have
had the reason for song, if it were appointed to one only. "Women
don't take things so hard as men," reasoned Ann Edwards.

When Jerome knocked at Squire Merritt's door that evening, Mrs.
Merritt opened it. For a minute everything was dark before him; he
had thought that he might see Lucina. His voice sounded strange in
his own ears when he replied to Mrs. Merritt's greeting; he almost
reeled when he followed her into the parlor. It was a cool, spring
night, and there was a fire on the hearth. A silver branch of candles
on the mantel-shelf lit the room.

Mrs. Merritt looked anxiously at Jerome as she placed a chair. "I
hope you are well," she said, in her quick way, but her voice was
kind. Jerome thought it sounded like Lucina's. He stammered that he
was quite well.

"You look pale."

When he made no response to that, she added, with a motherly cadence,
that he had been through a great deal lately; that she had felt very
sorry about the loss of his mill.

Jerome thanked her. He sat opposite, in a great mahogany arm-chair,
holding himself very erect; but his pulses sang in his ears, and his
downcast eyes scanned the roses in the carpet. He did not understand
it, but he was for the moment like a school-boy before the aroused
might of feminity of this little woman.

"It is partly about your mill that I want to see you," said Abigail
Merritt. "The Squire has something which he wishes to propose, but he
has begged me to do so for him. He thinks my chances of success are
better. I don't know about that," she finished, smiling.

Jerome looked up then, with quick attention, and she came at once to
the point. Abigail Merritt, her mind once made up, was not a woman to
bea