She extricated her fingers from the bread and again hurried across the floor.

Her son intercepted her with a single long stride.

“No use, mother,” he said quietly.  “Better let her alone.”

“You think it’s—?”

The young man slammed the door leading to the stairway with a fierce gesture.

“If you weren’t blinder than a bat, mother, you’d know by this time what ailed Fan,” he said angrily.

Mrs. Dodge sank into a chair by the table.

“Oh, I ain’t blind,” she denied weakly; “but I thought mebbe Fannie—­I hoped—­”

“Did you think she’d refused him?” demanded Jim roughly.  “Did you suppose—?  Huh! makes me mad clean through to think of it.”

Mrs. Dodge began picking the dough off her fingers and rolling it into little balls which she laid in a row on the edge of the table.

“I’ve been awful worried about Fanny—­ever since the night of the fair,” she confessed.  “He was here all that afternoon and stayed to tea; don’t you remember?  And they were just as happy together—­I guess I can tell!  But he ain’t been near her since.”

She paused to wipe her eyes on a corner of her gingham apron.

“Fanny thought—­at least I sort of imagined Mr. Elliot didn’t like the way you treated him that night,” she went on piteously.  “You’re kind of short in your ways, Jim, if you don’t like anybody; don’t you know you are?”

The young man had thrust his hands deep in his trousers’ pockets and was glowering at the dough on the molding board.

“That’s rotten nonsense, mother,” he burst out.  “Do you suppose, if a man’s really in love with a girl, he’s going to care a cotton hat about the way her brother treats him?  You don’t know much about men if you think so.  No; you’re on the wrong track.  It wasn’t my fault.”

His mother’s tragic dark eyes entreated him timidly.

“I’m awfully afraid Fanny’s let herself get all wrapped up in the minister,” she half whispered.  “And if he—­”

“I’d like to thrash him!” interrupted her son in a low tense voice.  “He’s a white-livered, cowardly hypocrite, that’s my name for Wesley Elliot!”

“But, Jim, that ain’t goin’ to help Fanny—­what you think of Mr. Elliot.  And anyway, it ain’t so.  It’s something else.  Do you—­suppose, you could—­You wouldn’t like to—­to speak to him, Jim—­would you?”

“What! speak to that fellow about my sister?  Why, mother, you must be crazy!  What could I say?—­’My sister Fanny is in love with you; and I don’t think you’re treating her right.’  Is that your idea?”

“Hush, Jim!  Don’t talk so loud.  She might hear you.”

“No danger of that, mother; she was lying on her bed, her face in the pillow, when I looked in her room ten minutes ago.  Said she had a headache and wasn’t going.”

Mrs. Dodge drew a deep, dispirited sigh.

“If there was only something a body could do,” she began.  “You might get into conversation with him, kind of careless, couldn’t you, Jim?  And then you might mention that he hadn’t been to see us for two weeks—­’course you’d put it real cautious, then perhaps he—­”