nces of the past fortnight since his arrival
in Eastborough, but the most of his thoughts were given to the remark
made by Mrs. Putnam about his leaving Deacon Mason's. He had been
uniformly polite and to a slight degree attentive to Miss Mason. The
Deacon's horse was a slow one, and so on several occasions he had hired
a presentable rig and a good stepper over to Eastborough Centre, and had
taken Miss Mason out to ride. He reflected now, as he had never done
before, that of course the whole town knew this, and the thought came
home to him strongly that by so doing he might have inflicted a triple
injury upon Miss Mason, Mr. Pettingill, and himself. He was not in love
with Miss Mason, nor Miss Putnam; they were both pretty girls, and in
the city it was the custom to be attentive to pretty girls without
regard to consequences.

He had asked Miss Mason to go riding with him the next day, but he
inwardly resolved that it would be the last time he would take her, and
he was in doubt whether to go back to the city at once or go to some
other town and board at a hotel, or look around and find some other
place in Eastborough. One consideration kept him from leaving
Eastborough; he knew that if he did so the singing-master would claim
that he had driven him out of town, and although he had a hearty
contempt for the man, he was too high spirited to leave town and give
the people any reason to think that Strout's antipathy to him had
anything to do with it.

Finally a bright idea struck him. Why hadn't he thought of it before? He
would go and see Uncle Ike, state the case frankly and ask him to let
him live with him for a month. He could bunk in the kitchen, and he
preferred Uncle Ike's conversation to that of any other of the male sex
whom he had met in Eastborough. With this idea firmly fixed in his mind
he retired and slept peacefully.

While Quincy was debating with himself and coming to the conclusion
previously mentioned, another conversation, in which his name often
occurred, took place in Deacon Mason's kitchen.

The old couple were seated by the old-fashioned fireplace, in which a
wood fire was burning. The stove had superseded the hanging crane and
the tin oven for cooking purposes, but Deacon Mason clung to the
old-fashioned fireplace for heat and light. The moon was high and its
rays streamed in through the windows, the curtains of which had not been
drawn.

For quite a while they sat in silence, then Deacon Mas