“Did you ever see a girl with such sweet ways as your sister?” persisted Lawrence.

“Elmira is a good girl,” Jerome admitted, confusedly.  He loved his sister, and would have defended her against depreciation with his life, but he compared inwardly, with scorn, her sweet ways with Lucina’s.

“There isn’t a girl her equal in this world,” cried her lover, enthusiastically.  “Don’t you say so, Jerome?  You’re her brother, you know what she is.  Did you ever see anything like that cunning little face she makes, when she looks up at you?”

“Elmira’s a good girl,” Jerome repeated.

Lawrence had to be contented with that.  He went on, to tell Jerome his plans with regard to the engagement between himself and Elmira.  He was clearly much under the wise influence of his mother.  “Mother says, on Elmira’s account as well as my own, I had better not pay regular attention to her,” he said, ruefully, yet with submission.  “She says to go to see her occasionally, in a way that won’t make talk, and wait.  She’s coming to see Elmira herself.  I’ve talked it over with her, and she’s agreed to it all, as, of course, she would.  Some girls wouldn’t, but she—­Jerome, I don’t believe when we’ve been married fifty years that your sister will ever have refused to do one single thing I thought best for her.”

Jerome nodded with a puzzled and wistful expression, puzzled because of any man’s so exalting his sister when Lucina Merritt was in the world, wistful at the sight of a joy which he must deny himself.

When he went home that night he saw by the way his mother and sister looked up when he entered the room that they were wondering if Lawrence had told him the news, and what he thought of it.  Elmira’s face was so eager that he did not wait.  “Yes, I’ve seen him,” he said.

Elmira blushed, and quivered, and bent closer over her work.

“What did I tell you?” said his mother, with a kind of tentative triumph.

“You don’t know now what Doctor Prescott will say,” said Jerome.

“Lawrence says his mother thinks his father will come round by-and-by, when he gets started in his profession; he always liked Elmira.”

“Well, there’s one thing,” said Jerome, “and that is—­of course you and Elmira are not under my control, but no sister of mine will ever enter any family where she is not welcome, with my consent.”

“Lawrence says he knows his father will be willing by-and-by,” said Elmira, tremulously.

“You know Doctor Prescott always liked your sister,” said Ann Edwards.

“Well, if he likes her well enough to have her marry his son, it’s all right,” said Jerome, and went out to wash his hands and face before supper.

That night Lawrence stole in for a short call.  When Elmira came up-stairs after he had gone, Jerome, who had been reading in his room, opened his door and called her in.

“Look here, Elmira,” said he, “I don’t want you to think I don’t want you to be happy.  I do.”