Until Mercy came, Stephen White had rarely been asked to the pleasurings of the young people in Penfield.  There was a general impression that he did not care for things of that sort.  His manner was wrongly interpreted, however:  it was really only the constraint born of the feeling that he was out of his place, or that nobody wanted him.  He watched in silent wonder the cordial way in which, it seemed to him, that Mercy talked with everybody, and made everybody feel happy.

“Oh, Mercy, how can you!” he would exclaim:  “I feel so dumb, even while I am talking the fastest!”

“Why, so do I, Stephen,” said Mercy.  “I am often racking my brains to think what I shall say next.  Half the people I meet are profoundly uninteresting to me; and half of the other half paralyze me at first sight, and I feel like such a hypocrite all the time; but, oh, what a pleasure it is to talk with the other quarter!”

“Yes,” sighed Stephen, “you look so happy and absorbed sometimes that it makes me feel as if you had forgotten me altogether.”

“Silly boy!” laughed Mercy.  “Do you want me to prove to you by a long face that I am remembering you?—­Darling,” she added, “at those very times when you see me seem so absorbed and happy in company, I am most likely thinking about the last time you looked into my face, or the next time you will.”

And for once Stephen was satisfied.

The picnic at which Mercy met Parson Dorrance had taken place on a mountain some six miles south-west of Penfield.  This mountain was the western extremity of the range of which I have before spoken; and at its base ran the river which made the meadow-lands of Penfield and Danby so beautiful.  Nowhere in America is there a lovelier picture than these meadow-lands, seen from the top of this mountain which overhangs them.  The mountain is only about twenty-five hundred feet high:  therefore, one loses no smallest shade of color in the view; even the difference between the green of broom-corn and clover records itself to the eye looking down from the mountain-top.  As far as one can see to northward the valley stretches in bands and belts and spaces of varied tints of green.  The river winds through it in doubling curves, and looks from the height like a line of silver laid in loops on an enamelled surface.  To the east and the west rise the river terraces, higher and higher, becoming, at last, lofty and abrupt hills at the horizon.

When Parson Dorrance was introduced to Mercy, she was alone on a spur of rock which jutted out from the mountain-side and overhung the valley.  She had wandered away from the gay and laughing company, and was sitting alone, absorbed and almost saddened by the unutterable beauty of the landscape below.  Stephen had missed her, but had not yet dared to go in search of her.  He imposed on himself a very rigid law in public, and never permitted himself to do or say or even look any thing which could suggest to others the intimacy of their relations.  Mercy sometimes felt this so keenly that she reproached him.  “I can’t see why you should think it necessary to avoid me so,” she would say.  “You treat me exactly as if I were only a common acquaintance.”