, he looked around for a
newspaper as involuntarily as a soldier feels in his belt for his pistol.
He had more than once smiled bitterly to himself at the consciousness of
the flimsy bulwark; but he found it invaluable. Sometimes, it is true, her
impatient instinct made a keen thrust at the truth, and she would say
angrily,--

"Put down that paper! I want to see your face when I speak to you;" but
his reply, "Why, mother, I am reading. I was just going to read something
aloud to you," would usually disarm and divert her. It was one of her
great pleasures to have him read aloud to her. It mattered little what he
read: she was equally interested in the paragraphs of small local news,
and in the telegraphic summaries of foreign affairs. A revolt in a
distant European province, of which she had never heard even the name, was
neither more nor less exciting to her than the running away of a heifer
from the premises of an unknown townsman.

All through the evening, the sounds of moving of furniture, and brisk
going up and down stairs, came through the partition, and interrupted
Stephen's thoughts as much as they did his mother's. They had lived so
long alone in the house in absolute quiet, save for the semi-occasional
stir of Marty's desultory house-cleaning, that these sounds were
disturbing, and not pleasant to hear. Stephen did not like them much
better than his mother did; and he gave her great pleasure by remarking,
as he bade her good-night,--

"I suppose those people next door will get settled in a day or two, and
then we can have a quiet evening again."

"I should hope so," replied his mother. "I should think that a caravan of
camels needn't have made so much noise. It's astonishing to me that folks
can't do things without making a racket; but I think some people feel
themselves of more consequence when they're making a great noise."

The next morning, as Stephen was bidding his mother good-morning, he
accidentally glanced out of the window, and saw Mercy walking slowly away
from the house with a little basket on her arm.

"She'll go to market every morning," he thought to himself. "I shall see
her then."

Not the slightest glance of Stephen's eye ever escaped his mother's
notice.

"Ah! there goes the lady," she said. "I wonder if she is always going down
town at this hour? You will have to manage to go either earlier or later,
or else people will begin to talk about you."

Stephen White had one rule of cond