CHAPTER VI.
It did not take Gifford Woodhouse very long to get settled in Lockhaven.
His office and bedroom constituted his household, and Miss Deborah never knew that her bags of lavender were not even taken out of the trunk, and that the hard-featured Irishwoman who "came in by the day" never saw the paper of directions, written, that she might be able to read it easily, in Miss Deborah's small, neat hand.
But Miss Deborah was right in thinking Helen would look after his comfort, and Gifford soon felt that his real "home" in Lockhaven was at the parsonage, though he had not time to drop in half as often as the master and mistress urged him to do.
He did not tell Helen of that talk with Lois, which had brought a soberer look to his face than she had ever seen there.

But she had noticed it, and wondered at it, and she felt his reserve, too, in speaking of her cousin; she even asked herself if he could have cared for Lois?
But the thought was too absurd.

"Probably they've quarreled again," she said regretfully, she never had been able to understand her cousin's impatience with him.
Perhaps Gifford thought that she had an intuitive knowledge of the ache there was in his heart when she talked of Lois, for he was comforted in a vague way by the sympathetic look which was always on Helen's face when she spoke to any one who seemed troubled.

So he was glad to come to the parsonage as often as he could, and hear the Ashurst news, and have a cup of tea with the preacher and his wife.
John and Helen often walked home with him, though his rooms were quite at the other end of the town, near the river and the mills; and one night, as they stood on the shaking bridge, and looked down at the brown water rushing and plunging against the rotten wooden piers, Helen began to ask him about Mr.Forsythe.
"Tell me about him," she said.

"You have seen him since he left college.
I only just remember him in Ashurst, though I recall Mrs.Forsythe perfectly: a tall, sick-looking lady, with an amiably melancholy face, and three puffs of hair on each side of it." "Except that the puffs are white now, she is just the same," Gifford answered.