The reader will be spared Mr. Worthington’s feelings after Cynthia left him, although they were intense enough, and absorbing and far-reaching enough.  He sat down on a chair and buried his head in his hands.  His impulse had been to leave the house and return again on the morrow, but he remembered that he had been asked to stay for supper, and that such a proceeding would cause comment.  At length he got up and stood before the fire, his thoughts still above the clouds, and it was thus that Mr. Merrill found him when he entered.

“Good evening,” said that gentleman, genially, not knowing in the least who Bob was, but prepossessed in his favor by the way he came forward and shook his hand and looked him clearly in the eye.

“I’m Robert Worthington, Mr. Merrill” said he.

“Eh!” Mr. Merrill gasped, “eh!  Oh, certainly, how do you do, Mr. Worthington?” Mr. Merrill would have been polite to a tax collector or a sheriff.  He separated the office from the man, which ought not always to be done.  “I’m glad to see you, Mr. Worthington.  Well, well, bad storm, isn’t it?  I had an idea the college didn’t open until next week.”

“Mr. Worthington’s going to stay for supper, Papa,” said Susan, entering.

“Good!” cried Mr. Merrill.  “Capital!  You won’t miss the old folks after supper, will you, girls?  Your mother wants me to go to a whist party.”

“It can’t be helped, Carry,” said Mr. Merrill to his wife, as they walked up the hill to a neighbor’s that evening.

“He’s in love with Cynthia,” said Mrs. Merrill, somewhat sadly; “it’s as plain as the nose on your face, Stephen.”

“That isn’t very plain.  Suppose he is!  You can dam a mountain stream, but you can’t prevent it reaching the sea, as we used to say when I was a boy in Edmundton.  I like Bob,” said Mr. Merrill, with his usual weakness for Christian names, “and he isn’t any more like Dudley Worthington than I am.  If you were to ask me, I’d say he couldn’t do a better thing than marry Cynthia.”

“Stephen!” exclaimed Mrs. Merrill.  But in her heart she thought so, too.  “What will Mr. Worthington say when he hears the young man has been coming to our house to see her?”

Mr. Merrill had been thinking of that very thing, but with more amusement than concern.

To return to Mr. Merrill’s house, the three girls and the one young man were seated around the fire, and their talk, Merrill as it had begun, was becoming minute by minute more stilted.  This was largely the fault of Susan, who would not be happy until she had taken Jane upstairs and left Mr. Worthington and Cynthia together.  This matter had been arranged between the sisters before supper.  Susan found her opening at last, and upbraided Jane for her unfinished theme; Jane, having learned her lesson well, accused Susan.  But Cynthia, who saw through the ruse, declared that both themes were finished.  Susan, naturally indignant at such ingratitude, denied this.  The manoeuvre, in short, was executed very clumsily and very obviously, but executed nevertheless—­the sisters marching out of the room under a fire of protests.  The reader, too, will no doubt think it a very obvious manoeuvre, but some things are managed badly in life as well as in books.