"You should not say such things as that, Rachel," answered the squire, rather reprovingly. "Why not?" went on Mrs. Temple. At this moment John Temple opened the dining-room door, and walked up to his place at the table, while Mrs. Temple still had his letter in her hand. "Good-morning, Mrs. Temple; good-morning, uncle," said John, pleasantly. "Good-morning, nephew John," answered Mrs. Temple, with just a touch of defiance in her tone. "Do you see I am meddling with your property?" And she placed the letter in his hand. "I have just been admiring the handwriting of your lady correspondent, and the size and fullness of her epistle." John's brown face colored slightly, and he put out his hand for his letter, but that was all. "Ah," he said, looking at it with affected carelessness, "this is from my landlady in town, and no doubt contains all my unpaid bills." "I thought you had no unpaid bills," retorted Mrs. Temple, smiling. "Your uncle, on my suggesting that he should pay some of mine, held you up as a pattern in the matter of bills. 'John owes nothing,' he said; now it appears to me that if that envelope contains nothing but bills, that John must owe a great deal." "Rachel, do not talk nonsense," interrupted the squire, moving his newspaper restlessly. "John, what will you take?" John put his letter into his pocket before he made his choice. "Let me hide my bills first," he said. "Thanks, uncle," he said, "I'll have some cold grouse." Thus the subject of John's letter was dropped for the present, but Mrs. Temple had not forgotten it. She waited until the squire went out of the room, and then went up to John, smilingly. "Well, my nephew John," she said, "I'll leave you now to study your unpaid bills; or," she added archly, "to read your love letters from an old woman, and one, maybe, from a young one, too!" "I wish it were so," replied John, as Mrs. Temple laughed and moved toward the door of the room; "but I am not so fortunate as you think." But the moment she had disappeared his expression changed, and he hastily drew out the envelope Miss Webster had directed, and found inside the letter from May. This also he quickly opened, and his face softened strangely as he read the tender words it contained. "May, dear little May," he murmured to himself, half-aloud, "and you miss me, darling, do you? but not more, not half so much, May, as I miss you." He read her long letter twice, and then put it into his pocket, and going into the hall, took a cap from the hat-stand, and strolled out into the park. The mist lay on the dewy grass and floated in the air, blurring the landscape somewhat, and hanging shadow-like around the trees. But John Temple scarcely noticed the atmosphere. He was trying to unravel some of the problems of his life; to make a crooked path straight for the sake of his young love. "But for May I should not mind," he was thinking, "but I must shield May; she must never know."