nearest market town with butter, eggs, and other farm produce.
She readily obtained permission to accompany them, and made some
mysterious purchases. From this time onward Roger observed that
she was much in her room, and that she went out more for exercise
than from the motive of getting through with the weary, idle hours.
For some reason she also gained such an influence over thoughtless
Belle that the latter took tolerably good care of little Fred
and Minnie, as the children were familiarly called. While she
maintained toward him her polite and friendly manner, he saw that
he was forgotten, and that it had not entered her mind that he
could ever do anything for her or be anything more to her than at
the present time. But every hour she gained a stronger hold upon
his sympathy, and occasionally, when she thought herself unobserved,
he saw a troubled and almost fearful look come into her eyes, as if
something were present to her imagination that inspired the strongest
dread. At such times he was mastered by impulses of self-sacrifice
that would have seemed very absurd if put into plain words. He
kept his thoughts, however, to himself, and with an instinctive
reticence sought to disguise even from his mother the feelings that
were so new, and so full of delicious pain. That he was becoming
quite different from the careless, self-satisfied young fellow that
he had been hitherto was apparent to all, and after his outburst
on Sunday evening his mother half guessed the cause. But he misled
her to some extent, and Susan altogether, by saying, "I've had a
falling-out with Amelia Stone."

"Well, she's the last girl in the world that I'd mope about if I
were a man," was his sister's emphatic reply.

"You're not a man; besides I'm not moping. I'm only cutting my