The supper-table was still standing.  “Where have you been, Jerome Edwards?” cried his mother.  She cast a sharp look at his parcel, but said nothing about it.  Jerome laid it on top of the old desk which had belonged to his father.  “I have been over to Dale,” he replied; “I didn’t start very early.”

His aunt Belinda looked at him amiably.  She had not changed much.  Her face, shaded by her long curls, had that same soft droop as of a faded flower.  Once past her bloom of the flesh, there was, in a woman so little beset by storms of the spirit as Belinda Lamb, little further change possible until she dropped entirely from her tree of life.  She looked at Jerome with the amiable light of a smile rather than a smile itself, and said, with her old, weak, but clinging pounce upon disturbing trifles, “Why, Jerome, you ’ain’t been all this time gettin’ to Dale an’ back?”

“I didn’t hurry,” replied Jerome, coldly, drawing a chair up to the supper-table.  He had always a sensation of nervous impatience with this mild, negatively sweet woman which he could not overcome, though he felt shamed by it.  He preferred to see Paulina Maria, though between her and himself a covert antagonism survived the open one of his boyhood—­at least, he could dislike her without disliking himself.

The candle-light fell full upon Paulina Maria’s face, which was even more transparent than formerly; so transfused was her clear profile by the candle-light that the outlines seemed almost to waver and be lost.  She was knitting a fine white cotton stocking in an intricate pattern, and did not look at Jerome, or speak to him, beyond her first nod of recognition when he entered.

Presently, however, Jerome turned to her.  “How is Henry?” he inquired.

“About the same,” she replied, in her clear voice, which was unexpectedly loud, and seemed to have a curious after-tone.

“His eyes are no worse, then?”

“No worse, and no better.”

“Can’t he do any more than he did last year?” asked Mrs. Edwards.

“No, he can’t.  He hasn’t been able to do a stitch on shoes since last Thanksgiving.  He can’t do anything but sit at the window and knit plain knittin’.  I don’t know how he would get along, if I hadn’t showed him how to do that.  I believe he’d go crazy.”

“Don’t you think that last stuff Doctor Prescott put in his eyes did him any good?” asked Mrs. Edwards.

“No, I don’t.  He didn’t think it would, himself.  He said all there was to do was to go to Boston and see that great doctor there and have an operation, an’ it’s goin’ to cost three hundred dollars.  Three hundred dollars!—­it’s easy enough to talk—­three hundred dollars!  Adoniram has been laid up with jaundice half the winter.  I’ve bound shoes, and I’ve knit these fine stockin’s for Mis’ Doctor Prescott.  They go towards the doctor’s bill, but they’re a drop in the bucket.  She’d allow considerable on them, but it ain’t her say.  Three hundred dollars!”