He was instantly ashamed of the innocent prevarication. But he told himself he did not choose to discuss Miss Orr’s affairs with Mrs. Black. Just then Lydia came in, her eyes shining, her cheeks very pink; but like the minister she seemed disposed to silence, and Mrs. Black was forced to restrain her curiosity. “How’d you make out this morning?” she inquired, as Lydia, having hurried through her dinner, rose to leave the table. “Very well, thank you, Mrs. Black,” said the girl brightly. Then she went at once to her room and closed the door. At supper time it was just the same; neither the minister nor the girl who sat opposite him had anything to say. But no sooner had Mrs. Black begun to clear away the dishes than the two withdrew to the vine-shaded porch, as if by common consent. “She ought to know right off about Fanny Dodge and the minister,” Mrs. Black told herself. She was still revolving this in her mind as she walked sedately along the street, the red and yellow striped bag clasped tightly in both hands. Of course everybody in the village would suppose she knew all about Lydia Orr. But the fact was she knew very little. The week before, one of her customers in Grenoble, in the course of a business transaction which involved a pair of chickens, a dozen eggs and two boxes of strawberries, had asked, in a casual way, if Mrs. Black knew any one in Brookville who kept boarders. “The minister of our church boards with me,” she told the Grenoble woman, with pardonable pride. “I don’t know of anybody else that takes boarders in Brookville.” She added that she had an extra room. “Well, one of my boarders—a real nice young lady from Boston—has taken a queer notion to board in Brookville,” said the woman. “She was out autoing the other day and went through there. I guess the country ’round Brookville must be real pretty this time of year.” “Yes; it is, real pretty,” she had told the Grenoble woman. And this had been the simple prelude to Lydia Orr’s appearance in Brookville. Wooded hills did not interest Mrs. Black, nor did the meandering of the silver river through its narrow valley. But she took an honest pride in her own freshly painted white house with its vividly green blinds, and in her front yard with its prim rows of annuals and thrifty young dahlias. As for Miss Lydia Orr’s girlish rapture over the view from her bedroom window, so long as it was productive of honestly earned dollars, Mrs. Black was disposed to view it with indulgence. There was nothing about the girl or her possessions to indicate wealth or social importance, beyond the fact that she arrived in a hired automobile from Grenoble instead of riding over in Mrs. Solomon Black’s spring wagon. Miss Orr brought with her to Brookville one trunk, the contents of which she had arranged at once in the bureau drawers and wardrobe of Mrs. Black’s second-best bedroom. It was evident from a private inspection of their contents that Miss Orr was in mourning.