Those who thought that by having Marsena Pul-ford take their pictures they would get on more intimate terms with him fell into grievous error. He was more sententious and unapproachable in his studio, as he called it, than anywhere else. In the old days, before the partnership, when he did everything himself, his manner in the reception-room downstairs, where he showed samples, gave the prices of frames, and took orders, had no equal for formal frigidity--except his subsequent demeanor in the operating-room upstairs. The girls used to declare that they always emerged from the gallery with “cold shivers all over them.” This, however, did not deter them from going again, repeatedly, after the outbreak of the war had started up the universal notion of being photographed. When the new partner came in, in this April of 1862, Marsena was able to devote himself exclusively to the technical business of the camera and the dark-room, on the second floor. He signalled this change by wearing now every day an old russet-colored velveteen jacket, which we had never seen before. This made him look even more romantically melancholy and picturesque than ever, and revived something of the fascinating curiosity as to his hidden past; but it did nothing toward thawing the icebound shell which somehow came at every point between him and the good-fellowship of the community. The partnership was scarcely a week old when something happened. The new partner, standing behind the little show-case in the reception-room, transacted some preliminary business with two customers who had come in. Then, while the sound of their ascending footsteps was still to be heard on the stairs, he hastily left his post and entered the little work-room at the back of the counter. “You couldn’t guess in a baker’s dozen of tries who’s gone upstairs,” he said to the boy. Without waiting for even one effort, he added: “It’s the Parmalee girl, and Dwight Ransom’s with her, and he’s got a Lootenant’s uniform on, and they’re goin’ to be took together!” “What of it?” asked the unimaginative boy. He was bending over a crock of nitric acid, transferring from it one by one to a tub of water a lot of spoiled glass plates. The sickening fumes from the jar, and the sting of the acid on his cracked skin, still further diminished his interest in contemporary sociology. “Well, what of it?” he repeated, sulkily. “Oh, I don’t know,” said the new partner, in a listless, disappointed way. “It seemed kind o’ curious, that’s all. Holdin’ her head up as high in the air as she does, you wouldn’t think she’d so much as look at an ordinary fellow like Dwight Ransom.” “I suppose this is a free country,” remarked the boy, rising to rest his back.