a minute she
had her visor down and her armor buckled. This certainly becomes
interesting."

"Tom, I certainly must ask you what business it is of yours," said my
mother, settling back into the hortatory attitude familiar to mothers.
"Supposing the thing is as you think,--suppose that Mary is a girl of
refinement and education, who, from some unfortunate reason, has no
resource but her present position,--why should you hunt her out of it?
If she is, as you think, a lady, there is the strongest reason why a
gentleman should respect her feelings. I fear the result of all this
restless prying and intermeddling of yours will be to drive her away;
and really, now I have had her, I don't know how I ever could do
without her. People talk of female curiosity," said my mother, with a
slightly belligerent air; "I never found but men had fully as much
curiosity as women. Now, what will become of us all if your
restlessness about this should be the means of Mary's leaving us? You
know the perfectly dreadful times we had before she came, and I don't
know anybody who has less patience to bear such things than you."

In short, my mother was in that positive state of mind which is
expressed by the colloquial phrase of being on her high horse. I--as
the male part of creation always must in such cases--became very meek
and retiring, and promised to close my eyes and ears, and not dream,
or think, or want to know, anything which it was not agreeable to Mary
and my mother that I should. I would not look towards the doorbell,
nor utter a word about the McPhersons, who, by the bye, decided to
take the house in our neighborhood.

But though I was as exemplary as one of the saints, it did no good.
Mary, for some reasons known to herself, became fidgety, nervous,
restless, and had frequent headaches and long crying spells in her own
private apartment, after the manner of women when something is the
matter with them.

My mother was, as she always is with every creature in her employ,
maternal and sympathetic, and tried her very best to get into her
confidence.

Mary only confessed to feeling a little unwell, and hinted obscurely
that perhaps she should be obliged to leave the place. But it was
quite evident that her leaving was connected with the near advent of
the McPhersons in the next block; for I observed that she always
showed some little irrepressible signs of nervousness whenever that
subject was incidentally alluded to. Finally, o