a more quiet home, and this
winter she is coming to New York to keep house for me."

Helen thought she might like Mark's mother, who, he told her, had been
twice married, and was now Mrs. Banker, and a widow. She must be
different from Mrs. Cameron; and Helen let herself down to another
degree of toleration for the man whose mother taught her daughter to
mend the family socks. Still there was about her a chilling reserve,
which Mark wondered at, for it was not thus that ladies were accustomed
to receive his advances. He did not guess that Wilford Cameron stood
between him and Helen's good opinion; but when, after the family came
in, the conversation turned upon Katy and her life in New York, the
secret came out in the sharp, caustic mariner with which she spoke of
New York and its people.

"It's Will and the Camerons," Mark thought, blaming Helen less than he
would have done, if he, too, had not known something of the Cameron
pride.

It was a novel position in which Mark found himself that night; an
inmate of a humble farmhouse, where he could almost touch the ceiling
with his hand, and where his surroundings were so different from what he
had been accustomed to; but, unlike Wilford Cameron, he did not wish
himself away, nor feel indignant at Aunt Betsy's odd, old-fashioned
ways, or Uncle Ephraim's grammar. He noticed Aunt Betsy's oddities, it
is true, and noticed Uncle Ephraim's grammar, too; but the sight of
Helen sitting there, with so much dignity and self-respect, made him
look beyond all else, straight into her open face and clear brown eyes,
where there was nothing obnoxious or distasteful. Her grammar was
correct, her manner, saving a little stiffness, ladylike and refined;
and Mark rather enjoyed his situation as self-invited guest, making
himself so agreeable that Uncle Ephraim forgot his hour of retiring, nor
discovered his mistake until, with a loud yawn, Aunt Betsy told him that
it was half-past nine, and she was "desput sleepy."

Owing to Helen's influence there had been a change of the olden customs,
and instead of the long chapter, through which Uncle Ephraim used to
plod so wearily, there was now read the Evening Psalms, Aunt Betsy
herself joining in the reading, which she mentally classed with the
"quirks," but confessed to herself that it "was most as good as the
Bible."

As there were only Prayer Books enough for the family, Helen, in
distributing them, purposely passed Mark by, thinking he mi