He was the more vexed with himself because he was sure that his confusion was so plain that she could not but see it, and that it was with a kind intention of relieving his embarrassment that she spoke again. "I am going to visit my grandmother in Brookfield." He replied by some sort of an unintelligible murmur, and was doubly angry with himself for being so shy and awkward. He glanced furtively at the trim young man opposite, and was relieved to find that that individual was reading and giving no heed. He wondered why he should be so completely thrown out of his usual self-possession by this girl, so that when he talked to her, and was most anxious to appear at his best, he was most surely at his worst. There came whimsically into his head a thought of the wisdom of training the clergy to the social gifts and graces, and he remembered the flippant speech of Mrs. Wilson about the need of their being able to pay compliments. "I seem to be specially stupid when I try to talk to you," he said with boyish frankness. Miss Morison looked at him curiously. "Am I to take that as a compliment or the reverse?" she asked. "It must be a compliment, I suppose, for it shows how much power you have over me." He was reassured by her smile, and felt that this was not so badly said. "The power to make you stupid, I think you intimated." "Oh, no," he responded, with more eagerness than the occasion called for; "I didn't mean that." She smiled again, a smile which seemed to him nothing less than adorable, and yet which teased him a little, although he could not tell why. She took up the novel which lay in her lap. "Have you read this?" she inquired. He shook his head. "You forget," he answered, "that I am a deacon. At the Clergy House we do not read novels." "How little you must know of life," returned she. There was a silence of some moments. The train rushed on, past fields desolate under patches of snow, and stark, leafless trees; over rivers dotted with cakes of grimy ice; between banks of frost-gnawed rock. The landscape in the dim January afternoon was gray and gloomy; and as day declined everything became more lorn and forbidding. Maurice turned away from the window, and sighed. "How disconsolate the country looks!" said he. "I am country bred, and I don't know that I ever thought of the sadness of it; but now if I see the country in winter it makes me sigh for the people who have to live there all the year round." "But they don't notice it any more than you did when you lived in it." "Perhaps not; but it seems to me as if they must. At any rate they must feel the effects of it, whether they are conscious of it or not." Miss Morison looked out at the dull, sodden fields and stark trees.