Sarah listened with her ear close to the crack of the kitchen door when her daughter opened the outside one.  She heard Thomas Payne’s hearty greeting and Charlotte’s decorous reply.  The door of the front room shut, then she set the kitchen door ajar softly, but she could hear nothing but a vague hum of voices across the entry; she could not distinguish a word.  However, it was as well that she could not, for her heart would have sunk, as did poor Thomas Payne’s.

Thomas, with his thick hair brushed into a shining roll above his fair high forehead, in his best flowered waistcoat and blue coat with brass buttons, sat opposite Charlotte, his two nicely booted feet toeing out squarely on the floor, his two hands on his knees, and listened to what she had to say, while his boyish face changed and whitened.  Thomas was older than Charlotte, but he looked younger.  It seemed, too, as if he looked younger when with her than at other times, although he was always anxiously steady and respectful, and lost much of that youthful dash which made him questioningly admired by the young people of Pembroke.

Charlotte began at once after they were seated.  Her fair, grave face colored, her voice had in it a solemn embarrassment.  “I don’t know but you thought I was doing a strange thing to ask you to come here to-night,” she said.

“No, I didn’t; I didn’t think so, Charlotte,” Thomas declared, warmly.

“I felt as if I ought to.  I felt as if it was my duty to,” said she.  She cast her eyes down.  Thomas waited, looking at her with vague alarm.  Somehow some college scrapes of his flashed into his head, and he had a bewildered idea the she had found them out and that her sweet rigid innocence was shocked, and she was about to call him to account.

But Charlotte continued, raising her eyes, and meeting his gravely and fairly: 

“You’ve been coming here three Sabbath evenings running, now,” said she.

“Yes, I know I have, Charlotte.”

“And you mean to keep on coming, if I don’t say anything to hinder it?”

“You know I do, Charlotte,” replied Thomas, with ardent eyes upon her face.

“Then,” said Charlotte, “I feel as if it was my duty to say this to you, Thomas.  If you come in any other way than as a friend, if you come on any other errand than friendship, you must not come here any more.  It isn’t right for me to encourage you, and let you come here and get your feelings enlisted.  If you come here occasionally as a friend in friendship I shall be happy to have you, but you must not come here with any other hopes or feelings.”

Charlotte’s solemnly stilted words, and earnest, severe face chilled the young man opposite.  His face sobered.  “You mean that you can’t ever think of me in any other way than as a friend,” he said.

Charlotte nodded.  “You know it is not because there’s one thing against you, Thomas.”

“Then it is Barney, after all.”