“We must go home now.  I have letters to write.”

Mrs. Carr was disappointed.  She had anticipated a long afternoon of chatty gossip with her neighbor; but she saw that Mercy had some strong reason for hurrying home, and she acquiesced unhesitatingly.

Mrs. White did not urge them to remain.  To all Mrs. White’s faults it must be confessed that she added the virtue of absolute sincerity.

“Good-afternoon, Mrs. Carr,” and “Good-afternoon, Mrs. Philbrick,” fell from her lips in the same measured syllables and the same cold, unhuman voice which had so startled Mercy once before.

“What a perfectly horrid old woman!” exclaimed Mercy, as soon as they had crossed the threshold of their own door.  “I’ll never go near her again as long as I live!”

“Why, Mercy Carr!” exclaimed her mother, “what do you mean?  I don’t think so.  She got very tired before dinner was over.  I could see that, poor thing!  She’s drefful weak, an’ it stan’s to reason she’d be kind o’ snappish sometimes.”

Mercy opened her lips to reply, but changed her mind and said nothing.

“It’s just as well for mother to keep on good terms with her, if she can,” she thought.  “Maybe it’ll help divert a little of Mrs. White’s temper from him, poor fellow!”

Stephen had followed them to the door, saying little; but at the last moment, when Mercy said “good-by,” he had suddenly held out his hand, and, clasping hers tightly, had looked at her sadly, with a world of regret and appeal and affection and almost despair in the look.

“What a life he must lead of it!” thought Mercy.  “Dear me!  I should go wild or else get very wicked.  I believe I’d get very wicked.  I wonder he shuts himself up so with her.  It is all nonsense:  it only makes her more and more selfish.  How mean, how base of her, to be so jealous of his talking with me!  If she were his wife, it would be another thing.  But he doesn’t belong to her body and soul, if she is his mother.  If ever I know him well enough, I’ll tell him so.  It isn’t manly in him to let her tyrannize over him and everybody else that comes into the house.  I never saw any human being that made one so afraid, somehow.  Her tone and look are enough to freeze your blood.”

While Mercy was buried in these indignant thoughts, Stephen and his mother, only a few feet away, separated from her only by a wall, were having a fierce and angry talk.  No sooner had the door closed upon Mercy than Mrs. White had said to Stephen,—­

“Have you the slightest idea how much excitement you showed in conversing with Mrs. Philbrick?  I have never seen you look or speak in this way.”

The flush had not yet died away on Stephen’s face.  At this attack, it grew deeper still.  He made no reply.  Mrs. White continued,—­

“I wish you could see your face.  It is almost purple now.”

“It is enough to make the blood mount to any man’s face, mother, to be accused so,” replied Stephen, with a spirit unusual for him.