John Holmes was a hermit, but he was a hermit who loved boys; girls were too much like delicate bits of china, he was afraid of handling for fear of breaking.  Girls grown up were not quite so much like bits of china, but he had no friend save one among womankind, his sister that was to have been, Prudence Pomeroy.  He had not addressed her with the name his brother had given her since that last day in the garden; she was gravely Prudence to him, in her plain attire, her smooth hair and little unworldly ways, almost a veritable Puritan maiden.

As to her marrying—­again (he always thought “again"), he had no more thought of it than she had.  He had given to her every letter he had received from his brother, but they always avoided speaking his name; indeed Prudence, in her young reverence for his age and wisdom, had seldom named his Christian name to others or to himself, he was “Mr. Holmes” to her.

John Holmes was her junior by three years, yet he had constituted himself friend, brother, guardian, and sometimes, he told her, she treated him as though he were her father, beside.

“It’s good to have all in one,” she once replied, “for I can have you all with me at one time.”

After being a year at Middlefield he had written to her about the secluded homestead and fine salt bathing at the “Point,” urging her to spend her summer there.  Marjorie had seen her face at church one day in early spring as she had stopped over the Sabbath at the small hotel in the town on her way on a journey farther north.

This afternoon, while Prudence had been under the apple-tree and in the front entry, he had bent over the desk in his chamber, writing.  This chamber was a low, wide room, carpeted with matting, with neither shades nor curtains at the many-paned windows, containing only furniture that served a purpose—­a washstand, with a small, gilt-framed glass hanging over it, one rush-bottomed chair beside the chair at the desk, that boasted arms and a leather cushion, a bureau, with two large brass rings to open each drawer, and a narrow cot covered with a white counterpane that his hostess had woven as a part of her wedding outfit before he was born, and books!  There were books everywhere—­in the long pine chest, on the high mantel, in the bookcase, under the bed, on the bureau, and on the carpet wherever it was not absolutely necessary for him to tread.

Prudence and Marjorie had climbed the narrow stairway once this summer to take a peep at his books, and Prudence had inquired if he intended to take them all out West when he accepted the presidency of the college that was waiting for him out there.

“I should have to come back to my den, I couldn’t write anywhere else.”

“And when somebody asks me if you are dead, as some king asked about the author of Butler’s ‘Analogy’ once, I’ll reply, as somebody replied:  ’Not dead, but buried.’”

“That is what I want to be,” he had replied.  “Don’t you want a copy of my little pocket dictionary?  It just fits the vest pocket, you see.  You don’t know how proud I was when I saw a young man on the train take one from his pocket one day!”