It was strange he stopped--was it not, mother ?" "Perhaps he is busy.

I saw him driving with his father the other day," said Abigail.
"Well, perhaps he is," assented Lucina, easily.

Then she asked advice as to this or that shade in the ears of the little poodle-dog which she was embroidering.
"Lucina is as transparent as glass," her mother thought.

"She could never speak of Lawrence Prescott in that way if she were in love with him, and there is no one else in town." Abigail Merritt, acute and tender mother as she was, settled into the belief that her daughter was merely given to those sweetly melancholy and wondering reveries natural to a maiden soul upon the threshold of discovery of life.

"I used to do just so, busy as I always was, before Eben came," she thought, with a little pang of impatient shame for herself and her daughter that they must yield to such necessities of their natures.