Before Eloise could reply Mrs. Biggs exclaimed, “Of course she hasn’t, and I don’t know how under the sun it got in here, unless Tim put it here unbeknownst to me.  I never read novels, and that is the wust I ever got hold of, and the biggest lie.  I told Tim so.”

She took it from the table and carried it from the room, followed by the young men, who laughed as they thought how the widow, who never read novels, betrayed the fact that she had read “The Frozen Pirate.”

CHAPTER XII

THE MARCH OF EVENTS

“I say, Howard,” Jack began, when they were out upon the road, “that girl ought to have something besides ‘The Frozen Pirate’ and ’Foxe’s Martyrs’ to brighten her up,—­books and flowers, and other things.  Do you think she’d take them?”

Howard’s head was cooler than Jack’s, and he replied, “She would resent gifts from us, but would take them from Amy.  Anyhow, we can try that dodge.”

“By Jove, you are right!  We can send her a lot of things with Mrs. Amy’s compliments,” Jack exclaimed.  “Flowers and books and candy, and—­”

He did not finish what was in his mind, but the next morning, immediately after breakfast, he pretended that he had an errand in the village, and started off alone, preferring to walk, he said, when Howard suggested the carriage, and also declining Howard’s company, which was rather faintly offered.  Howard never cared to walk when he could drive, and then he had a plan which he could better carry out with Jack away than with him present.  He was more interested in Eloise than he would like to confess to Jack or any one, and he found himself thinking of her constantly and wishing he could do something to make her more comfortable than he was sure she could be even in Mrs. Biggs’s parlor.  He was very fastidious in his tastes, and Mrs. Biggs’s parlor was a horror to him, with its black hair-cloth furniture, and especially the rocker in which Eloise sat, and out of which she seemed in danger of slipping every time she bent forward.  He had thought of his uncle’s sea chair on the occasion of his first call, and now he resolved to send it in Amy’s name.  Something had warned him that in Eloise’s make-up there was a pride equal to his own.  She might receive favors from Amy, as she had the hat, and although a chair would seem a good deal perhaps, he would explain it on the ground of Amy’s great desire to help some one when he saw her.  He’d send it at once, he thought, and he wrote a note, saying, “Miss Smith:  Please accept this sea chair with the compliments of Mrs. Amy, who thinks you will find it more comfortable than the hair-cloth rocker, of which I told her.  As she seldom writes to any one, she has made me her amanuensis, and hopes you will excuse her.  Yours, very truly, Howard Crompton, for Mrs. Amy.”