“It's a shame, your having to bring the water,” said Miss Swan; she was the girl who had spoken before. The other one came forward and said, “Won't you sit down?” She spoke to Lemuel; the law-student answered, “Thank you; I don't care if I do.” Lemuel did not know whether to stay, nor what to say of Miss Swan's picture, and he thanked the young lady and remained standing. “O Jessie, _Jessie_, Jessie!” cried Miss Swan. The other went to her, tranquilly, as if used to such vehement appeals. “Just _see_ how my poor cow looks since I painted out that grass! She hasn't got a leg to stand on!” The law-student did nothing but make jokes about the picture. “I think she looks pretty well for a cow that you must have had to study from a milk-can--nearest you could come to a cow in Boston.” Miss Carver, the other young lady, ignored his joking, and after some criticisms on the picture, left him and Miss Swan to talk it over. She talked to Lemuel, and asked him if he had read a book he glanced at on the table, and seemed willing to make him feel at ease. But she did not. He thought she was very proud, and he believed she wanted him to go, but he did not know how to go. Her eyes were so still and pure; but they dwelt very coldly upon him. Her voice was like that look put into sound; it was rather high-pitched but very sweet and pure, and cold. He hardly knew what he said; he felt hot, and he waited for some chance to get away. At last he heard Miss Swan saying, “_Must_ you go, Mr. Berry? So _soon_!” and saw her giving the student her hand, with a bow of burlesque desolation. Lemuel prepared to go too. All his rusticity came back upon him, and he said, “Well, I wish you good evening.” It seemed to him that Miss Carver's still eyes looked a sort of starry scorn after him. He found that he had brought away the book they had been talking about, and he was a long time in question whether he had better take it back at once, or give it to her when she came to breakfast. He went to bed in the same trouble of mind. Every night he had fallen asleep with Statira in his thoughts, but now it was Miss Carver that he thought of, and more and more uncomfortably. He asked himself what she would say if she saw his mother in the bloomers. She was herself not dressed so fashionably as Statira, but very nicely. XVII. At Sewell's house the maid told Evans to walk up into the study, without seating him first in the reception-room, as if that were needless with so intimate a friend of the family. He found Sewell at his desk, and he began at once, without the forms of greeting: “If you don't like that other subject, I've got a new one for you, and you could write a sermon on it that would make talk.” “You look at it from the newspaper point of view,” returned Sewell, in the same humour. “I'm not an 'enterprise,' and I don't want to make talk in your sense. I don't know that I want to make talk at all; I should prefer to make thought, to make feeling.”