p-stairs,
murmuring: "He went away and never so much as said good-by to me. I do
not think it was civil."

Meanwhile the mother sat still, with only the click, click of the
knitting-needles, which somehow seemed always to assist her to think.
She had steadily refused help in money from Uncle Josiah, and now,
being as angry as was within the possibilities of a temper radiant with
the sunshine of good humor, she rejoiced that she owed Josiah nothing.

"He shall have a piece of my mind," she said aloud, and indeed a large
slice would have been a sweetening addition to his crabbed sourness.
"Ah, me!" she added, "I must not think of the money; but how easy it
would make things!" Not even Schmidt had been permitted to pay more than
a reasonable board. No, she would not repine; and now madame,
reluctantly accepting her son's increased wages, had insisted that his
room be kept vacant and paid for, and was not to be gainsaid about the
needed fur-lined roquelaure she bought for her hostess and the extra pay
for small luxuries.

"May God forgive me that I have been unthankful for His goodness," said
Mary Swanwick, and so saying she rose and putting aside her thoughts
with her knitting, sat down to read a little in the book she had taken
from the library, to Friend Poulson's dismay. "Thou wilt not like it,
Mary Swanwick." In a minute of mischief young Mr. Willing had told her
of a book he had lately read--a French book, amusing and witty. He had
left her wishing he could see her when she read it, but self-advised to
stay away for a time.

She sat down with anticipative satisfaction. "What hard French!" she
thought. "I must ask help of madame," as she often called her, Friend
Courval being, as she saw plainly, too familiar to her guest. As she
read, smiling at the immortal wit and humor of a day long passed,
suddenly she shut the book with a quick movement, and set it aside.
"What manner of man was this Rabelais? Friend Poulson should have been
more plain with me; and as for Master Willing, I shall write to him,
too, a bit of my mind." But she never did, and only said aloud: "If I
give away any more pieces of my mind, I shall have none left," and
turned, as her diary records, to the "Pilgrim's Progress," of which she
remarked, "an old book by one John Bunyan, much read by Friends and
generally approved, ridiculed by many, but not by me. It seems to me
good, pious wit, and not obscene like the other. I fear I sin sometimes
in be