valise" belonging to his tenants. It was a very shabby valise: it had made
many a voyage with its first owner, Captain Carr. It was a very little
valise: it could not have held one gown of any of the modern fashions.

"Dear me," thought Stephen, as he put it into the carriage at Mercy's
feet, "what sort of women are these I've taken under my roof! I expect
they'll be very unpleasing sights to my eyes. I did hope she'd be
good-looking." How many times in after years did Stephen recall with
laughter his first impressions of Mercy Philbrick, and wonder how he could
have argued so unhesitatingly that a woman who travelled with only one
small valise could not be good-looking.

"Will you come to the house to-morrow?" he asked.

"Oh, no," replied Mercy, "not for three or four weeks yet. Our furniture
will not be here under that time."

"Ah!" said Stephen, "I had not thought of that. I will call on you at the
hotel, then, in a day or two."

His adieus were civil, but only civil: that most depressing of all things
to a sensitive nature, a kindly indifference, was manifest in every word
he said, and in every tone of his voice.

Mercy felt it to the quick; but she was ashamed of herself for the
feeling. "What business had I to expect that he was going to be our
friend?" she said in her heart. "We are only tenants to him."

"What a kind-spoken young man he is, to be sure, Mercy!" said Mrs. Carr.

So all-sufficient is bare kindliness of tone and speech to the unsensitive
nature.

"Yes, mother, he was very kind," said Mercy; "but I don't think we shall
ever know him very well."

"Why, Mercy, why not?" exclaimed her mother. "I should say he was most
uncommon friendly for a stranger, running back after our valise in the
rain, and a goin' to call on you to oncet."

Mercy made no reply. The carriage rolled along over the rough and muddy
road. It was too dark to see any thing except the shadowy black shapes of
houses, outlined on a still deeper blackness by the light streaming from
their windows. There is no sight in the world so hard for lonely, homeless
people to see, as the sight of the lighted windows of houses after
nightfall. Why houses should look so much more homelike, so much more
suggestive of shelter and cheer and companionship and love, when the
curtains are snug-drawn and the doors shut, and nobody can look in, though
the lights of fires and lamps shine out, than they do in broad daylight,
with open windows and pe