The pride of Miss Mattie’s heart was a chair, which, with incredible industry, she had made from an empty flour barrel.  She had spoiled a good barrel to make a bad chair, but her thrifty soul rejoiced in her achievement.  Roger never went near it, so Miss Mattie herself sat in it on Sunday afternoons, nodding, and crooning hymns to herself.

[Sidenote:  An Awful Chasm]

“How did father stand it?” thought Roger, intending no disrespect.  He loved his mother and appreciated her good qualities, but he saw the awful chasm between those two souls, which no ceremony of marriage could ever span.

[Sidenote:  Roger Austin]

In appearance, Roger was like his father.  He had the same clear, dark skin, with regular features and kind, dark eyes, the same abundant, wavy hair, strong, square chin, and incongruous, beauty-loving mouth.  He had, too, the lovable boyishness, which never quite leaves some fortunate men.  He was studying law in the judge’s office, and hoped by another year to be ready to take his examinations.  After working hard all day, he found refreshment for mind and body in an hour or so at night spent with the treasures of his father’s library.

“Let us buy our entrance to this guild with a long probation,” read Roger.  “Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding upon them?  Why insist upon rash personal relations with your friend?  Why go to his house, and know his mother and brother and sisters?  Why be visited by him at your own?  Are these things material to our covenant?  Leave this touching and clawing.  Let him be to me——­”

“I’ve spoke twice,” complained Miss Mattie, “and you don’t hear me no more’n your pa did.”

“I beg your pardon, Mother.  I did not hear you come in.  What is it?”

“I was just a-sayin’ that maybe those papers would be too expensive.  Maybe I ought not to have ’em.”

“I’m sure they’re not, Mother.  Anyhow, you get them, and we’ll make it up in some other way if we have to.”  Dimly, in the future, Roger saw long, quiet evenings in which his disturbing influence should be rendered null and void by the charms of Lovely Lulu, or the Doctor’s Darling.

[Sidenote:  A Morning Call]

“Barbara North sent her pa over here this morning to ask for some book.  I disremember now what it was, but it was after you was gone.”

Roger’s expressive face changed instantly.  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner, Mother?” He spoke with evident effort.  “It’s too late now for me to go over there.”

“There’s no call for you to go over.  They can send again.  Miss Miriam can come after it any time.  They ain’t got no business to let a blind old man like Ambrose North run around by himself the way they do.”

“He takes very good care of himself.  He knew this place before he was blind, and I don’t think there is any danger.”

“Just the same, he ought not to go around alone, and that’s what I told him this morning.  ‘A blind old man like you,’ says I, ’ain’t got no business chasin’ around alone.  First thing you know, you’ll fall down and break a leg or arm or something.’”