Was
he to assume a right to her in this way without even asking? When he
did not come to tea nor long after, and Mrs. Pennel and her grandfather
wondered, she laughed, and said gayly,--

"Oh, he knows he'll have time enough to see me. Sally seems more like a
stranger."

But when Moses came home after moonrise, determined to go and console
Mara for his absence, he was surprised to hear the sound of a rapid and
pleasant conversation, in which a masculine and feminine voice were
intermingled in a lively duet. Coming a little nearer, he saw Mara
sitting knitting in the doorway, and a very good-looking young man
seated on a stone at her feet, with his straw hat flung on the ground,
while he was looking up into her face, as young men often do into pretty
faces seen by moonlight. Mara rose and introduced Mr. Adams of Boston to
Mr. Moses Pennel.

Moses measured the young man with his eye as if he could have shot him
with a good will. And his temper was not at all bettered as he observed
that he had the easy air of a man of fashion and culture, and learned by
a few moments of the succeeding conversation, that the acquaintance had
commenced during Mara's winter visit to Boston.

"I was staying a day or two at Mr. Sewell's," he said, carelessly, "and
the night was so fine I couldn't resist the temptation to row over."

It was now Moses's turn to listen to a conversation in which he could
bear little part, it being about persons and places and things
unfamiliar to him; and though he could give no earthly reason why the
conversation was not the most proper in the world,--yet he found that it
made him angry.

In the pauses, Mara inquired, prettily, how he found the Kittridges, and
reproved him playfully for staying, in despite of his promise to come
home. Moses answered with an effort to appear easy and playful, that
there was no reason, it appeared, to hurry on her account, since she
had been so pleasantly engaged.

"That is true," said Mara, quietly; "but then grandpapa and grandmamma
expected you, and they have gone to bed, as you know they always do
after tea."

"They'll keep till morning, I suppose," said Moses, rather gruffly.

"Oh yes; but then as you had been gone two or three months, naturally
they wanted to see a little of you at first."

The stranger now joined in the conversation, and began talking with
Moses about his experiences in foreign parts, in a manner which showed a
man of sense and breeding. Moses