Irish grocer, whose suppleness and effrontery had given Starkfield
its first notion of "smart" business methods, and whose new brick
store testified to the success of the attempt. His son seemed likely
to follow in his steps, and was meanwhile applying the same arts to
the conquest of the Starkfield maidenhood. Hitherto Ethan Frome had
been content to think him a mean fellow; but now he positively
invited a horse-whipping. It was strange that the girl did not seem
aware of it: that she could lift her rapt face to her dancer's, and
drop her hands into his, without appearing to feel the offence of
his look and touch.

Frome was in the habit of walking into Starkfield to fetch home his
wife's cousin, Mattie Silver, on the rare evenings when some chance
of amusement drew her to the village. It was his wife who had
suggested, when the girl came to live with them, that such
opportunities should be put in her way. Mattie Silver came from
Stamford, and when she entered the Fromes' household to act as her
cousin Zeena's aid it was thought best, as she came without pay, not
to let her feel too sharp a contrast between the life she had left
and the isolation of a Starkfield farm. But for this-as Frome
sardonically reflected-it would hardly have occurred to Zeena to
take any thought for the girl's amusement.

When his wife first proposed that they should give Mattie an
occasional evening out he had inwardly demurred at having to do the
extra two miles to the village and back after his hard day on the
farm; but not long afterward he had reached the point of wishing
that Starkfield might give all its nights to revelry.

Mattie Silver had lived under his roof for a year, and from early