heart began to
be touched, and he resolved to bring things to a crisis as soon as
possible. He therefore sought an opportunity to propose. But it was
hard to find. For though Mrs. Holmes was tolerably ingenious, she could
not get the boys or the deacon to pay any regard to her hints. Boys are
totally depraved on such questions anyhow, and always manage to stumble
in where any privacy is sought. And as for the deacon, it really seemed
as though he had some design in intruding at the critical moment.

I do not think that John was seriously in love with Miss Dunton. If he
had been he would have found some means of communicating with her. A
thousand spies with sleepless eyes all round their heads can not keep a
man from telling his love somehow, if he really have a love to tell.

There is another fact which convinces me that John Harlow was not yet
very deeply in love with Janet. He was fond of talking with her of
Byron and Milton, of Lord Bacon and Emerson--i.e., as I have already
said, he was fond of putting his own knowledge on dress parade in the
presence of one who could appreciate the display. But whenever any
little thing released him for the time from conversation in the sitting
room he was given to slipping out into the old kitchen, where, sitting
on a chair that had no back, and leaning against the chimney side, he
delighted to talk to Huldah. She couldn't talk much of books, but she
could talk most charmingly of everything that related to the country
life, and she could ask John many questions about the great city. In
fact, John found that Huldah had come into possession of only such
facts and truths as could be reached in her narrow life, but that she
had assimilated them and thought about them, and that it was more
refreshing to hear her original and piquant remarks about the topics
she was acquainted with than to listen to the tireless stream of Janet
Dunton's ostentatious erudition. And he found more delight in telling
the earnest and hungry-minded country girl about the great world of men
and the great world of books than in talking to Janet, who was, in the
matter of knowledge, a little _blasee_, if I may be allowed the
expression. And then, to Huldah he could talk of his mother, whom he
had often watched moving about that same kitchen. When he had spoken to
Janet of the associations of the old place with his mother's
countenance, she had answered with a quotation from some poet, given in
a tone of empty