“I jest stood like a dumb critter the minnit I got in,” said Marty.  “I didn’t know whether I wuz in the house or out in the woods, the whole place smelled o’ hemlock so, an’ looked so kind o’ sunny and shady all ter oncet.—­I jest wished Steve could see it.  He’d go wild,” added the unconsciously injudicious Marty.

Mrs. White’s face darkened instantly.

“It must be very unwholesome to have rooms made so dark and damp,” she said.  “I should think people might have more sense.”

“Oh, it wa’n’t dark a mite!” interrupted Marty, eagerly.  “There wuz a blazin’ fire on the hearth in the settin’-room, an’ the sun a-streamin’ into both the south winders.  It made shadders on the floor, jest as it does in the woods.  I’d jest ha’ liked to set down there a spell, and not do nothin’ but watch ’em.”

At this moment, a low knock at the door interrupted the conversation.  Marty opened the door, and there stood Mercy herself, holding in her hands some wreaths of laurel and pine, and a large earthen dish with ferns growing in it.  It was the day before Christmas; and Mercy had been busy all day, putting up the Christmas decorations in her rooms.  As she hung cross after cross, and wreath after wreath, she thought of the poor, lonely, and peevish old woman she had seen there weeks before, and wondered if she would have any Christmas evergreens to brighten her room.

“I don’t suppose a man would ever think of such things,” thought Mercy.  “I’ve a great mind to carry her in some.  I’ll never muster courage to go in there, unless I go to carry her something; and I may as well do it first as last.  Perhaps she doesn’t care any thing about things from the woods; but I think they may do her good without her knowing it.  Besides, I promised to go.”  It was now ten days since Stephen, meeting Mercy in the town one day, had stopped, and said to her, in a half-sad tone which had touched her,—­

“Do you really never mean to come again to see my mother?  I do assure you it would be a great kindness.”

His tone conveyed a great deal,—­his tone and his eyes.  They said as plainly as words could have said,—­

“I know that my mother treated you abominably, I know she is very disagreeable; but, after all, she is helpless and alone, and if you could only once get her to like you, and would come and see her now and then, it would be a kindness to her, and a great help to me; and I do yearn to know you better; and I never can, unless you will begin the acquaintance by being on good terms with my mother.”

All this Stephen’s voice and eyes had said to Mercy’s eyes and heart, while his lips, pronounced the few commonplace words which were addressed to her ear.  All this Mercy was revolving in her thoughts, as she deftly and with almost a magic touch laid the soft mosses in the earthen dish, and planted them thick with ferns and hepatica and partridge-berry vines and wintergreen.  But all she was conscious of saying to herself was, “Mr. White asked me to go; and it really is not civil not to do it, and I may as well have it over with.”