Mrs. Brown was waiting for him when he returned, and as he sat down in
the sitting-room, where she was busy at her sewing, she looked at him
in her slow way, and at last arose and came over near his chair.

"Have you promised her anything, Bradley?" she asked, laying her
thimbled hand upon his shoulder, as his own mother might have done.
Bradley lifted his gloomy eyes and colored a little.

"I don't know what I've said," he answered, from the depth of his swift
reaction. "More'n I had any business to say, probably."

"I thought likely. You can't afford to marry a girl out of pity for
her, Bradley--it won't do. I've seen how things stood for some time,
but I thought I wouldn't say anything." She paused and considered a
moment, standing there by his side. "It's a good thing for both of you
that you're going away. You hadn't ought to have let it go on so long."

"I couldn't help it," he replied with more sharpness in his voice than
he had ever used in speaking to her.

Her hand dropped from his shoulder. "No, I don't s'pose you could. It
aint natural for young people to stop an' think about these things. I
don't suppose you knew y'rself just where it was all leading to. Well,
now, don't worry, and don't let it interfere with your plans. She'll
outgrow it. Girls often go through two or three such attacks. Just go
on with your studies, and when you come back, if you find her
unmarried, why, then decide what to do."

Her touch of cynicism was accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that she
had never had a daughter.

XIII.

BRADLEY SEES IDA AGAIN.

Bradley felt that the world was widening for him, as he took the train
for Iowa City a few days later. He was now very nearly thirty years of
age, and was maturing more rapidly than his friends and neighbors knew,
for the processes of his mind, like those of an intricate coil of
machinery, were hidden deep away from the casual acquaintance.

He had secured, in the two years at the seminary, a fairly good
groundwork of the common English branches, and his occasional reading,
and especially his attendance upon law-suits, had given him a really
creditable understanding of common law. The Judge always insisted that
law was simple, but it wasn't as profitable as--chicanery.

"Any man, from his fund of common sense, can settle nine tenths of all
law-suits, but that aint what we're here for. A successful lawyer is
the fellow who tangles things up and keeps common law and c