tly a day
which he would not otherwise have known how to get through. He let a
soft, mysterious melancholy pervade his letter; he hinted darkly at
trouble and sorrow of which he could not definitely speak. He had the
good sense to tear his letter up when he had finished it, and to send
a short, sprightly note instead, saying that if Mrs. Frobisher and her
sister came to Boston at the end of the month, as they had spoken of
doing, they must be sure to let him know. Upon the impulse given him by
this letter he went more cheerfully to bed, and fell instantly asleep.

During the next three weeks he bent himself faithfully to the schemes
of work his father had outlined for him. He visited New York and
Philadelphia, and looked into the business and the processes there;
and he returned to Ponkwasset Falls to report and compare his facts
intelligently with those which he now examined in his father's
manufactory for the first time. He began to understand how his father,
who was a man of intellectual and artistic interests, should be fond of
the work.

He spent a good deal of time with his mother, and read to her, and got
upon better terms with her than they usually were. They were very much
alike, and she objected to him that he was too light and frivolous. He
sat with his sisters, and took an interest in their pursuits. He drove
them about with his father's sorrels, and resumed something of the old
relations with them which the selfish years of his college life had
broken off. As yet he could not speak of Campobello or of what had
happened there; and his mother and sisters, whatever they thought, made
no more allusion to it than his father had done.

They mercifully took it for granted that matters must have gone wrong
there, or else he would speak about them, for there had been some gay
banter among them concerning the objects of his expedition before he
left home. They had heard of the heroine of his Class Day, and they had
their doubts of her, such as girls have of their brothers' heroines.
They were not inconsolably sorry to have her prove unkind; and their
mother found in the probable event another proof of their father's total
want of discernment where women were concerned, for the elder Mavering
had come home from Class Day about as much smitten with this mysterious
Miss Pasmer as Dan was. She talked it over indignantly with her
daughters; they were glad of Dan's escape, but they were incensed with
the girl who could