In a perfectly unobtrusive and matter-of-course way, without so much as by your leave, the silent man had established a more or less silent intercourse with the Lawton family as a whole. He must pass the house on his daily horseback trip to the village, and the fact that he brought their morning mail or did a bit of marketing was a courtesy that could not be construed into an obligation, and the lending of a magazine, novel, or gardening book soon came to be a matter of course. Mrs. Lawton could not but welcome one of her own kind who belonged as remotely to a certain past as she herself. Brooke, remembering Dr. Russell’s words, greeted him cordially, glad to give cheer to one so lonely, and added to this motive, be it said, was the general interest which a man of fifty, who is in any way surrounded by a tragedy or mystery, excites in a young, warm-hearted woman; while the Cub fairly adored his tutor to be, afar off, for had not Stead a taste for horses, dogs, guns, fishing tackle, and, above all, liberty? Also, had he not offered to make easy the torturing pathway of mathematics?—while best of all from the first he had treated the youth of the difficult age, which is both aggressive and sensitive, like a fellow-man, younger, of course, but still an equal, instead of a cross between a fool, a nuisance, and a criminal, as some of his instructors had chosen to regard him. When Brooke had taken the little package from Stead’s hand, in spite of the unfamiliarity of the writing upon it, a sudden embarrassment seized upon her, making her redden to the temples; and, instead of considering and opening it as one of the many cards of Christmas greeting that she had received from fellow-students and friends ever since her Paris year, she laid it aside and presently carried it to her room.