Still he did not neglect his gratuitous nursing and doctoring.

He saved like a miser, though not at his mother's and sister's expense.

He himself would taste, in those days, no butter, no sugar, no fresh meat, no bread of fine flour, but he saw to it that is mother and Elmira were well provided.
When winter came again, he used to hasten secretly along the road, not wishing to meet Lucina for a new reason--lest she discover how thin his coat was against the wintry blast, how thin his shoes against the snow.
"I never thought Jerome was so close," Elmira sometimes said to her mother.
"He ain't close, he's got an object," returned Ann, with a shrewd, mysterious look.
"What do you mean, mother ?" "Nothin'." Elmira's and Lawrence's courtship progressed after the same fashion.
If Doctor Prescott suspected anything he made no sign.

Lawrence was attending patients regularly with his father and reading hard.
Sometimes, during his occasional calls upon Elmira, he saw Jerome.
The two young men, when they met on the road, exchanged covertly cordial courtesies; a sort of non-committal friendship was struck up between them.

Lawrence was the means of introducing Jerome to a new industry, of which he might otherwise never have heard.
"Father and I were on the old Dale road this morning," he said, "and there is a fine cranberry-meadow there on the left, if anybody wants to improve it.