"Thank you," replied Peter. He turned and went upstairs to his room. He
ought to have spent the night pacing his floor, but he did not. He went
to bed instead Whether Peter slept, we cannot say. He certainly lay very
still, till the first ray of daylight brightened the sky. Then he rose
and dressed. He went to the stables and explained to the groom that he
would walk to the station, and merely asked that his trunk should be
there in time to be checked. Then he returned to the house and told the
cook that he would breakfast on the way. Finally he started for the
station, diverging on the way, so as to take a roundabout road, that
gave him a twelve-mile tramp in the time he had before the train left.

Perhaps the hardest thing Peter encountered was answering his mother's
questions about the visit. Yet he never flinched nor dodged from a true
reply, and if his mother had chosen, she could have had the whole story.
But something in the way Peter spoke of Miss Pierce made Mrs. Stirling
careful, and whatever she surmised she kept to herself, merely kissing
him good-night with a tenderness that was unusual not merely in a
New-Englander, but even in her. During the rest of his stay, the Pierces
were quite as much kept out of sight, as if they had never been known.
Mrs. Stirling was not what we should call a "lady," yet few of those who
rank as such, would have been as considerate or tender of Peter's
trouble, if the power had been given them to lay it bare. Love,
sympathy, unselfishness and forbearance are not bad equivalents for
breeding and etiquette, and have the additional advantage of meeting new
and unusual conditions which sometimes occur to even the most
conventional.

One hope did come to her, "Perhaps, now that"--and Mrs. Stirling left
"that" blank even in her thoughts; "now my boy, my Peter, will not be so
set on going to New York." In this, however, she was disappointed. On