Peter did his packing quietly and quickly, not pausing for a moment in the task. Then he went downstairs, and joined the party, just finishing the supper. He refused, it is true, to eat anything, and was quiet, but this phase was so normal in him, that it occasioned no remark. Asked where Miss Pierce was, he explained briefly that he had left her in the hall, in order to do his packing and had not seen her since. In a few moments the party broke up. Peter said a good-bye to each, quite conscious of what he was doing, yet really saying more and better things than he had said in his whole visit, and quite surprising them all in the apparent ease with which he went through the duty. “You must come and see us when you have put your shingle out in New York,” said Mr. Pierce, not quite knowing why, having previously decided that they had had enough of Peter. “We shall be in the city early in September, and ready to see our friends.” “Thank you,” replied Peter. He turned and went upstairs to his room. He ought to have spent the night pacing his floor, but he did not. He went to bed instead Whether Peter slept, we cannot say. He certainly lay very still, till the first ray of daylight brightened the sky. Then he rose and dressed. He went to the stables and explained to the groom that he would walk to the station, and merely asked that his trunk should be there in time to be checked. Then he returned to the house and told the cook that he would breakfast on the way. Finally he started for the station, diverging on the way, so as to take a roundabout road, that gave him a twelve-mile tramp in the time he had before the train left. Perhaps the hardest thing Peter encountered was answering his mother’s questions about the visit. Yet he never flinched nor dodged from a true reply, and if his mother had chosen, she could have had the whole story. But something in the way Peter spoke of Miss Pierce made Mrs. Stirling careful, and whatever she surmised she kept to herself, merely kissing him good-night with a tenderness that was unusual not merely in a New-Englander, but even in her. During the rest of his stay, the Pierces were quite as much kept out of sight, as if they had never been known. Mrs. Stirling was not what we should call a “lady,” yet few of those who rank as such, would have been as considerate or tender of Peter’s trouble, if the power had been given them to lay it bare. Love, sympathy, unselfishness and forbearance are not bad equivalents for breeding and etiquette, and have the additional advantage of meeting new and unusual conditions which sometimes occur to even the most conventional. One hope did come to her, “Perhaps, now that”—and Mrs. Stirling left “that” blank even in her thoughts; “now my boy, my Peter, will not be so set on going to New York.” In this, however, she was disappointed. On the second day of his stay, Peter spoke of his intention to start for New York the following week.