When the frosty nights came Thomas and Evelina could not meet and
walk hand in hand over the fields behind the Squire's house, and they
very seldom could speak to each other. It was nothing except a
"good-day" on the street, and a stolen glance, which set them both
a-trembling lest all the congregation had noticed, in the
meeting-house. When the winter set fairly in they met no more, for
the elder Evelina was taken ill, and her young cousin did not leave
her even to go to meeting. People said they guessed it was Evelina
Adams's last sickness, and they furthermore guessed that she would
divide her property between her cousin Martha Loomis and her two
girls and Evelina Leonard, and that Evelina would have the house as
her share.

Thomas Merriam heard this last with a satisfaction which he did not
try to disguise from himself, because he never dreamed of there being
any selfish element in it. It was all for Evelina. Many a time he had
looked about the humble house where he had been born, and where he
would have to take Evelina after he had married her, and striven to
see its poor features with her eyes--not with his, for which
familiarity had tempered them. Often, as he sat with his parents in
the old sitting-room, in which he had kept so far an unquestioning
belief, as in a friend of his childhood, the scales of his own
personality would fall suddenly from his eyes. Then he would see, as
Evelina, the poor, worn, humble face of his home, and his heart would
sink. "I don't see how I ever can bring her here," he thought. He
began to save, a few cents at a time, out of his pitiful salary, to
at least beautify his own chamber a little when Evelina should come.
He made up his mind that she should have a little dressing-table,
with an oval mirror, and a white muslin frill around it, like one he