A SHADOW

“Mrs. Atwood,” said Mildred the next morning, “I want to thank you for your kindness in giving us our supper alone with papa the first evening of his arrival; but you need not put yourself to any extra trouble to-day.”

“Roger is the one to thank,” replied Mrs. Atwood.  “He’s grown so different, so considerate like, that I scarcely know him any more than I do the old place he’s so fixed up.  He says he’s going to paint the house after the summer work slacks off.  I don’t see what’s come over him, but I like the change very much.”

Mildred flushed slightly, but said, with some constraint, “Please thank him then from papa and mamma, but do not let us make you further trouble.  We shall all return to the city soon, and then you will have easier times every way.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Jocelyn, for we shall miss you all very much.  You’ve done us good in more ways than one.”

Roger did not appear at breakfast.  “A young horse strayed from the pasture, and Roger is out looking for him,” his mother explained when Mrs. Jocelyn asked after him.

Although not a member of any church, Mr. Jocelyn had great respect for his wife and daughter’s faith, and accompanied them to service that morning very readily.  Roger appeared in time to take Belle, as usual, but she found him so taciturn and preoccupied that she whispered to Mildred, “You’ve spoiled him for me.  He sits staring like an owl in the sunlight, and seeing just about as much.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself to make him so glum.  I intend to have a dozen beaux, and to keep them all jolly.”

Mildred was obliged to admit to herself that the young fellow was very undemonstrative at dinner, and that he did not exhibit the rusticity that she half hoped to see.  She gained the impression that he was observing her father very closely, and that no remark of his escaped him.  “He has the eyes of a lynx,” she thought, with a frown.  Still, apart from a certain annoyance at his deep interest in her and all relating to her, she was rather pleased at the impression which such a man as her father must make on one so unsophisticated.  Mr. Jocelyn was a finished man of the world, and his large experience left its impress on all that he said and did.  Although a little courtly in manner, he was so kindly and frank in nature that his superiority was not at all oppressive, and with true Southern bonhomie he made the farmer’s family quite at ease, leading them to speak freely of their rural affairs.  Susan soon lost all sense of restraint and began to banter her brother.

“You must have had a very affecting time in making up with Amelia Stone to have stayed out so late,” she remarked sotto voce.

“I’ve not seen Amelia Stone since the evening she was here,” he answered dryly.

“Indeed! what other charmer then tied you to her apron-strings so tightly?  You are very fickle.”