He went to the stables and explained to the groom that he would walk to the station, and merely asked that his trunk should be there in time to be checked.

Then he returned to the house and told the cook that he would breakfast on the way.

Finally he started for the station, diverging on the way, so as to take a roundabout road, that gave him a twelve-mile tramp in the time he had before the train left.
Perhaps the hardest thing Peter encountered was answering his mother's questions about the visit.

Yet he never flinched nor dodged from a true reply, and if his mother had chosen, she could have had the whole story.
But something in the way Peter spoke of Miss Pierce made Mrs.Stirling careful, and whatever she surmised she kept to herself, merely kissing him good-night with a tenderness that was unusual not merely in a New-Englander, but even in her.

During the rest of his stay, the Pierces were quite as much kept out of sight, as if they had never been known.
Mrs.Stirling was not what we should call a "lady," yet few of those who rank as such, would have been as considerate or tender of Peter's trouble, if the power had been given them to lay it bare.