rdinary civilities of a hostess. Had it not been
for the woman I have spoken of, who in her good-natured attention to my
wants amply made up for the abstraction of her mistress, I should have
fared ill at this meal, good and ample as it was, considering the
resources of those who provided it.

She seemed to dread to have him speak, almost to have him move. She
watched him with her lips half open, ready, as it appeared, to stop any
inadvertent expression he might utter in his efforts to be agreeable.
She even kept her left hand disengaged, with the evident intention of
stretching it out in his direction if in his lumbering stupidity he
should utter a sentence calculated to open my eyes to what she so
passionately desired to have kept secret. I saw it all as plainly as I
saw his heavy indifference to her anxiety; and knowing from experience
that it is in just such stolid louts as these that the worst passions
are often hidden, I took advantage of my years and forced a conversation
in which I hoped some flash of his real self would appear, despite her
wary watch upon him.

Not liking to renew the topic of the lane itself, I asked with a very
natural show of interest, who was their nearest neighbor. It was William
who looked up and William who answered.

"Old Mother Jane is the nearest," said he; "but she's no good. We never
think of her. Mr. Trohm is the only neighbor I care for. Such peaches as
the old fellow raises! Such grapes! Such melons! He gave me two of the
nicest you ever saw this morning. By Jupiter, I taste them yet!"

Lucetta's face, which should have crimsoned with mortification, turned
most unaccountably pale. Yet not so pale as it had previously done when,
a few minutes before, he began to say, "Loreen wants some of this soup
saved for"--and stopped awkwardly, conscious perhaps that Loreen's wants
should not be mentioned before me.

"I thought you promised me that you would never again ask Mr. Trohm for
any of his fruit," remonstrated Lucetta.

"Oh, I didn't ask! I just stood at the fence and looked over. Mr. Trohm
and I are good friends. Why shouldn't I eat his fruit?"

The look she gave him might have moved a stone, but he seemed perfectly
impervious to it. Seeing him so stolid, her head drooped, and she did
not answer a word. Yet somehow I felt that even while she was so
manifestly a prey to the deepest mortification, her attention was not
wholly given over to this one emotion. There was something