“Goodness, mother! whatever put such ideas into your head?  Of course I should never run any such risk as that.”

“A man can’t possibly be too careful,” remarked Mrs. White, sententiously.  “The world’s full of gossiping people, and women are very impressionable, especially such high-strung women as that young widow.  A man can’t possibly be too careful.  Read me the paper now, Stephen.”

Stephen was only too thankful to take refuge in and behind the newspaper.  A newspaper had so often been to him a shelter from his mother’s eyes, a protection from his mother’s tongue, that, whenever he saw a storm or a siege of embarrassing questioning about to begin, he looked around for a newspaper as involuntarily as a soldier feels in his belt for his pistol.  He had more than once smiled bitterly to himself at the consciousness of the flimsy bulwark; but he found it invaluable.  Sometimes, it is true, her impatient instinct made a keen thrust at the truth, and she would say angrily,—­

“Put down that paper!  I want to see your face when I speak to you;” but his reply, “Why, mother, I am reading.  I was just going to read something aloud to you,” would usually disarm and divert her.  It was one of her great pleasures to have him read aloud to her.  It mattered little what he read:  she was equally interested in the paragraphs of small local news, and in the telegraphic summaries of foreign affairs.  A revolt in a distant European province, of which she had never heard even the name, was neither more nor less exciting to her than the running away of a heifer from the premises of an unknown townsman.

All through the evening, the sounds of moving of furniture, and brisk going up and down stairs, came through the partition, and interrupted Stephen’s thoughts as much as they did his mother’s.  They had lived so long alone in the house in absolute quiet, save for the semi-occasional stir of Marty’s desultory house-cleaning, that these sounds were disturbing, and not pleasant to hear.  Stephen did not like them much better than his mother did; and he gave her great pleasure by remarking, as he bade her good-night,—­

“I suppose those people next door will get settled in a day or two, and then we can have a quiet evening again.”

“I should hope so,” replied his mother.  “I should think that a caravan of camels needn’t have made so much noise.  It’s astonishing to me that folks can’t do things without making a racket; but I think some people feel themselves of more consequence when they’re making a great noise.”

The next morning, as Stephen was bidding his mother good-morning, he accidentally glanced out of the window, and saw Mercy walking slowly away from the house with a little basket on her arm.

“She’ll go to market every morning,” he thought to himself.  “I shall see her then.”

Not the slightest glance of Stephen’s eye ever escaped his mother’s notice.