He puzzled much over it, then decided, not with that lenient slighting, as in other cases when womankind had vexed him with blind words, but with a fond reverence, as for some angelic mystery, that it was because Lucina was a girl. "Maybe girls are given to talking in that riddlesome kind of way," thought Jerome. He was blissfully certain upon one point, at all events. Lucina's whole manner had given evidence to a confidence and understanding upon her part. "She knows what I am doing," he told himself. "She knows how I am working, and she is contented and willing to wait. She knows, but she isn't bound." Jerome had not dreamed that Lucina's indisposition had had aught to do with distress of mind upon his account. Now he fell upon work as if it had been a veritable dragon of old, which he must slay to rescue his princess. He toiled from earliest dawn until far dark, and not with hands only. Still he did not neglect his gratuitous nursing and doctoring. He saved like a miser, though not at his mother's and sister's expense. He himself would taste, in those days, no butter, no sugar, no fresh meat, no bread of fine flour, but he saw to it that is mother and Elmira were well provided. When winter came again, he used to hasten secretly along the road, not wishing to meet Lucina for a new reason--lest she discover how thin his coat was against the wintry blast, how thin his shoes against the snow. "I never thought Jerome was so close," Elmira sometimes said to her mother. "He ain't close, he's got an object," returned Ann, with a shrewd, mysterious look. "What do you mean, mother?" "Nothin'." Elmira's and Lawrence's courtship progressed after the same fashion. If Doctor Prescott suspected anything he made no sign. Lawrence was attending patients regularly with his father and reading hard. Sometimes, during his occasional calls upon Elmira, he saw Jerome. The two young men, when they met on the road, exchanged covertly cordial courtesies; a sort of non-committal friendship was struck up between them. Lawrence was the means of introducing Jerome to a new industry, of which he might otherwise never have heard. "Father and I were on the old Dale road this morning," he said, "and there is a fine cranberry-meadow there on the left, if anybody wants to improve it. There's plenty of chance for drainage from that little stream that runs into Graystone, and it's sheltered from the frost. Old Jonathan Hawkins owns it; we went there--his wife is sick--and he said he used to sell berries off it, but it had run down. He said he'd be glad to let somebody work it on shares, just allowing him for the use of the land. He's too old to bother with it himself, and he is pretty well straitened for money. There's money in it, I guess."