"I wonder if Mrs. Simm _has_ been putting her foot in it!" thought he,
as he stalked home rather more energetically than was his custom.

That unfortunate lady was in her sitting-room, starching muslins, when
Mr. Clerron entered. She had surmised that he was gone to the farm, and
had looked for his return with a shadow of dread. She saw by his face
that something was wrong.

"Mrs. Simm," he began, somewhat abruptly, but not disrespectfully, "may
I beg your pardon for inquiring what Ivy Geer talked to you about,
yesterday?"

"Oh, good Lord! She ha'n't told you, has she?" cried Mrs. Simm,--her
fear of God, for once, yielding to her greater fear of man. The
embroidered collar, which she had been vigorously beating, dropped to
the floor, and she gazed at him with such terror and dismay in every
lineament, that he could not help being amused. He picked up the
collar, which, in her perturbation, she had not noticed, and said,--

"No, she has told me nothing; but I find her excited and ill, and I
have reason to believe it is connected with her visit here yesterday.
If it is anything relating to me, and which I have a right to know, you
would do me a great favor by enlightening me on the subject."

Mrs. Simm had not a particle of that knowledge in which Young America
is so great a proficient, namely, the "knowing how to get out of a
scrape." She was, besides, alarmed at the effect of her words on Ivy,
supposing nothing less than that the girl was in the last stages of a
swift consumption; so she sat down, and, rubbing her starchy hands
together, with many a deprecatory "you know," and apologetic "I am sure