I knew Warren Luce well enough.  I could tell just how it would strike him, seeing David up in a tree, flinging down apples to a girl.  I could very well judge, too, how he would encounter the fair apparition beneath.

But how would he strike Mary Ellen,—­this polished, smooth-tongued, handsomely dressed youth?  I had forebodings.  I seemed to divine the future.  I fidgeted upon my seat, and straightened myself up, rather pleased that my studies were getting complicated,—­that I should have a chance of searching out the natural heart of woman, when under the most trying circumstances.

But just as I was making ready to commence upon my new chapter, Mrs. Lane called me to come and help move Emily.  I very often lifted her from the chair to the sofa.  It could hardly be called lifting.  ’Twas like taking a little bird out of its nest and placing it in another.  “The Doctor’s boy has come,” said I, very quietly, when I had wheeled the sofa so that she might feel the air from the window.

She made no answer then; but a little after, when her mother stepped out a minute, she said, just as quietly,—­

“How will it be?”

“How do you think?” I said.

“I wish,” she replied, “that he hadn’t come.  David is a dear brother.  I fear.”

When Emily said “I fear,” there was no need to ask what.  She feared the effect upon Warren Luce of Mary Ellen’s fresh and simple beauty.  She feared the effect upon her of his city-manners and fluent speech.  She feared for David an abiding sorrow.  Warren Luce had travelled, had been in society, and had been educated.  I knew him well for a selfish, heartless fellow, whose very soul had been drowned in worldly pleasures.  Just from the midst of artificial life, how charming must appear to him our sweet wild-rose, our singing-bird, our fresh, untutored, innocent little country-girl!

“But why borrow trouble?” I said to myself.  “It will come soon enough.  If not in this way, then in some other.  Trouble stays not long away.”

CHAPTER II.

“The Crick” wasn’t half a mile across.  The Doctor’s house was in plain sight from our windows.  ’Twas just a pleasant walk round there, and we called them neighbors.  The two young men had always been on the very best of terms.  Warren liked David because he knew how good he was, and David liked Warren because he didn’t know how bad he was.  The chief bond between them was the boat.  Our stylish young gentleman, when he came down to Nature, wanted to get as near her as he could,—­not, perhaps, that he loved her, but he liked a change.  Nothing suited him better than “camping out,” or starting off before light a-fishing with David.

I was not at all surprised, therefore, that he should appear bright and early the next morning, to make some arrangement for the day.

I saw him coming, from my window, and was pleased that I had lingered at home rather beyond office-hours,—­for Mary Ellen was shelling peas in the back-doorway beneath, and I should have an opportunity of advancing somewhat in my new chapter.  It was a nice shady place.  The door-steps and the ground about them were still damp from the dew.