He sat around during the forenoon irresolute and of course unhappy.  After a while decision came to him in the person of Mrs. Ferret, who called and asked for a private interview.

Albert led her into the parlor, for the parlor was always private enough on a pleasant day.  Nobody cared to keep the company of a rusty box stove, a tattered hair-cloth sofa, six wooden chairs, and a discordant tinny piano-forte, when the weather was pleasant enough to sit on the piazza or to walk on the prairie.  To Albert the parlor was full of associations of the days in which he had studied botany with Helen Minorkey.  And the bitter memory of the mistakes of the year before, was a perpetual check to his self-confidence now.  So that he prepared himself to listen with meekness even to Mrs. Ferret.

“Mr. Charlton, do you think you’re acting just right—­just as you would be done by—­in paying attentions to Miss Marlay when you are just out of—­of—­the—­penitentiary?”

Albert was angered by her way of putting it, and came near telling her that it was none of her business.  But his conscience was on Mrs. Ferret’s side.

“I haven’t paid any special attention to Miss Marlay.  I called to see her as an old friend.”  Charlton spoke with some irritation, the more that he knew all the while he was not speaking with candor.

“Well, now, Mr. Charlton, how would you have liked to have your sister marry a man just out of—­well, just—­just as you are, just out of penitentiary, you know?  I have heard remarks already about Miss Marlay—­that she had refused a very excellent and talented preacher of the Gospill—­you know who I mean—­and was about to take up with—­well, you know how people talk—­with a man just out of the—­out of the penitentiary—­you know.  A jail-bird is what they said.  You know people will talk.  And Miss Marlay is under my care, and I must do my duty as a Chrischen to her.  And I know she thinks a great deal of you, and I don’t think it would be right, you know, for you to try to marry her.  You know the Scripcherr says that we must do as we’d be done by; and I wouldn’t want a daughter of mine to marry a young man just—­well—­just out of—­the—­just out of the penitentiary, you know.”

“Mrs. Ferret, I think this whole talk impertinent.  Miss Marlay is not at all under your care, I have not proposed marriage to her, she is an old friend who was very kind to my mother and to me, and there is no harm in my seeing her when I please.”

“Well, Mr. Charlton, I know your temper is bad, and I expected you’d talk insultingly to me, but I’ve done my duty and cleared my skirts, anyhow, and that’s a comfort.  A Chrischen must expect to be persecuted in the discharge of duty.  You may talk about old friendships, and all that; but there’s nothing so dangerous as friendship.  Don’t I know?  Half the marriages that oughtn’t to be, come from friendships.  Whenever you see a friendship between a young man and a young woman, look out for a wedding.  And I don’t think you ought to ask Isabel to marry you, and you just out of—­just—­you know—­out of the—­the penitentiary.”