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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Old Peabody Pew, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Old Peabody Pew
+       A Christmas Romance of a Country Church
+
+
+Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+Release Date: March 22, 2005  [eBook #1902]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD PEABODY PEW***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1907 Archibald Constable & Co. edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+The Old Peabody Pew: A Christmas Romance of a Country Church
+
+
+Dedication
+
+
+To a certain handful of dear New England women of names unknown to the
+world, dwelling in a certain quiet village, alike unknown:--
+
+We have worked together to make our little corner of the great universe a
+pleasanter place in which to live, and so we know, not only one another's
+names, but something of one another's joys and sorrows, cares and
+burdens, economies, hopes, and anxieties.
+
+We all remember the dusty uphill road that leads to the green church
+common.  We remember the white spire pointing upward against a background
+of blue sky and feathery elms.  We remember the sound of the bell that
+falls on the Sabbath morning stillness, calling us across the
+daisy-sprinkled meadows of June, the golden hayfields of July, or the
+dazzling whiteness and deep snowdrifts of December days.  The little
+cabinet-organ that plays the doxology, the hymn-books from which we sing
+"Praise God from whom all blessings flow," the sweet freshness of the old
+meeting-house, within and without--how we have toiled to secure and
+preserve these humble mercies for ourselves and our children!
+
+There really _is_ a Dorcas Society, as you and I well know, and one not
+unlike that in these pages; and you and I have lived through many
+discouraging, laughable, and beautiful experiences while we emulated the
+Bible Dorcas, that woman "full of good works and alms deeds."
+
+There never was a Peabody Pew in the Tory Hill Meeting-House, and Nancy's
+love story and Justin's never happened within its century-old walls; but
+I have imagined only one of the many romances that have had their birth
+under the shadow of that steeple, did we but realize it.
+
+As you have sat there on open-windowed Sundays, looking across purple
+clover-fields to blue distant mountains, watching the palm-leaf fans
+swaying to and fro in the warm stillness before sermon time, did not the
+place seem full of memories, for has not the life of two villages ebbed
+and flowed beneath that ancient roof?  You heard the hum of droning bees
+and followed the airy wings of butterflies fluttering over the
+gravestones in the old churchyard, and underneath almost every moss-grown
+tablet some humble romance lies buried and all but forgotten.
+
+If it had not been for you, I should never have written this story, so I
+give it back to you tied with a sprig from Ophelia's nosegay; a spring of
+"rosemary, that's for remembrance."
+
+K. D. W.
+
+August, 1907
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Edgewood, like all the other villages along the banks of the Saco, is
+full of sunny slopes and leafy hollows.  There are little, rounded, green-
+clad hillocks that might, like their scriptural sisters, "skip with joy,"
+and there are grand, rocky hills tufted with gaunt pine trees--these
+leading the eye to the splendid heights of a neighbour State, where snow-
+crowned peaks tower in the blue distance, sweeping the horizon in a long
+line of majesty.
+
+Tory Hill holds its own among the others for peaceful beauty and fair
+prospect, and on its broad, level summit sits the white-painted Orthodox
+Meeting-House.  This faces a grassy common where six roads meet, as if
+the early settlers had determined that no one should lack salvation
+because of a difficulty in reaching its visible source.
+
+The old church has had a dignified and fruitful past, dating from that
+day in 1761 when young Paul Coffin received his call to preach at a
+stipend of fifty pounds sterling a year; answering "that never having
+heard of any Uneasiness among the people about his Doctrine or manner of
+life, he declared himself pleased to Settle as Soon as might be Judged
+Convenient."
+
+But that was a hundred and fifty years ago, and much has happened since
+those simple, strenuous old days.  The chastening hand of time has been
+laid somewhat heavily on the town as well as on the church.  Some of her
+sons have marched to the wars and died on the field of honour; some,
+seeking better fortunes, have gone westward; others, wearying of village
+life, the rocky soil, and rigours of farm-work, have become entangled in
+the noise and competition, the rush and strife, of cities.  When the
+sexton rings the bell nowadays, on a Sunday morning, it seems to have
+lost some of its old-time militant strength, something of its hope and
+courage; but it still rings, and although the Davids and Solomons, the
+Matthews, Marks, and Pauls of former congregations have left few
+descendants to perpetuate their labours, it will go on ringing as long as
+there is a Tabitha, a Dorcas, a Lois, or a Eunice left in the community.
+
+This sentiment had been maintained for a quarter of a century, but it was
+now especially strong, as the old Tory Hill Meeting-House had been
+undergoing for several years more or less extensive repairs.  In point of
+fact, the still stronger word, "improvements," might be used with
+impunity; though whenever the Dorcas Society, being female, and therefore
+possessed of notions regarding comfort and beauty, suggested any serious
+changes, the finance committees, which were inevitably male in their
+composition, generally disapproved of making any impious alterations in a
+tabernacle, chapel, temple, or any other building used for purposes of
+worship.  The majority in these august bodies asserted that their
+ancestors had prayed and sung there for a century and a quarter, and what
+was good enough for their ancestors was entirely suitable for them.
+Besides, the community was becoming less and less prosperous, and church-
+going was growing more and more lamentably uncommon, so that even from a
+business standpoint, any sums expended upon decoration by a poor and
+struggling parish would be worse than wasted.
+
+In the particular year under discussion in this story, the valiant and
+progressive Mrs. Jeremiah Burbank was the president of the Dorcas
+Society, and she remarked privately and publicly that if her ancestors
+liked a smoky church, they had a perfect right to the enjoyment of it,
+but that she didn't intend to sit through meeting on winter Sundays, with
+her white ostrich feather turning grey and her eyes smarting and
+watering, for the rest of her natural life.
+
+Whereupon, this being in a business session, she then and there proposed
+to her already hypnotized constituents ways of earning enough money to
+build a new chimney on the other side of the church.
+
+An awe-stricken community witnessed this beneficent act of vandalism,
+and, finding that no thunderbolts of retribution descended from the
+skies, greatly relished the change.  If one or two aged persons
+complained that they could not sleep as sweetly during sermon-time in the
+now clear atmosphere of the church, and that the parson's eye was keener
+than before, why, that was a mere detail, and could not be avoided; what
+was the loss of a little sleep compared with the discoloration of Mrs.
+Jere Burbank's white ostrich feather and the smarting of Mrs. Jere
+Burbank's eyes?
+
+A new furnace followed the new chimney, in due course, and as a sense of
+comfort grew, there was opportunity to notice the lack of beauty.  Twice
+in sixty years had some well-to-do summer parishioner painted the
+interior of the church at his own expense; but although the roof had been
+many times reshingled, it had always persisted in leaking, so that the
+ceiling and walls were disfigured by unsightly spots and stains and
+streaks.  The question of shingling was tacitly felt to be outside the
+feminine domain, but as there were five women to one man in the church
+membership, the feminine domain was frequently obliged to extend its
+limits into the hitherto unknown.  Matters of tarring and water-proofing
+were discussed in and out of season, and the very school-children imbibed
+knowledge concerning lapping, overlapping, and cross-lapping, and first
+and second quality of cedar shingles.  Miss Lobelia Brewster, who had a
+rooted distrust of anything done by mere man, created strife by remarking
+that she could have stopped the leak in the belfry tower with her red
+flannel petticoat better than the Milltown man with his new-fangled
+rubber sheeting, and that the last shingling could have been more
+thoroughly done by a "female infant babe"; whereupon the person
+criticized retorted that he wished Miss Lobelia Brewster had a few infant
+babes to "put on the job--he'd like to see 'em try."  Meantime several
+male members of the congregation, who at one time or another had sat on
+the roof during the hottest of the dog days to see that shingling
+operations we're conscientiously and skilfully performed, were very
+pessimistic as to any satisfactory result ever being achieved.
+
+"The angle of the roof--what they call the 'pitch'--they say that that's
+always been wrong," announced the secretary of the Dorcas in a business
+session.
+
+"Is it that kind of pitch that the Bible says you can't touch without
+being defiled?  If not, I vote that we unshingle the roof and alter the
+pitch!"  This proposal came from a sister named Maria Sharp, who had
+valiantly offered the year before to move the smoky chimney with her own
+hands, if the "men-folks" wouldn't.
+
+But though the incendiary suggestion of altering the pitch was received
+with applause at the moment, subsequent study of the situation proved
+that such a proceeding was entirely beyond the modest means of the
+society.  Then there arose an ingenious and militant carpenter in a
+neighbouring village, who asserted that he would shingle the
+meeting-house roof for such and such a sum, and agree to drink every drop
+of water that would leak in afterward.  This was felt by all parties to
+be a promise attended by extraordinary risks, but it was accepted
+nevertheless, Miss Lobelia Brewster remarking that the rash carpenter,
+being already married, could not marry a Dorcas anyway, and even if he
+died, he was not a resident of Edgewood, and therefore could be more
+easily spared, and that it would be rather exciting, just for a change,
+to see a man drink himself to death with rain-water.  The expected
+tragedy never occurred, however, and the inspired shingler fulfilled his
+promise to the letter, so that before many months the Dorcas Society
+proceeded, with incredible exertion, to earn more money, and the interior
+of the church was neatly painted and made as fresh as a rose.  With no
+smoke, no rain, no snow nor melting ice to defile it, the good old
+landmark that had been pointing its finger Heavenward for over a century
+would now be clean and fragrant for years to come, and the weary sisters
+leaned back in their respective rocking-chairs and drew deep breaths of
+satisfaction.
+
+These breaths continued to be drawn throughout an unusually arduous
+haying season; until, in fact, a visitor from a neighbouring city was
+heard to remark that the Tory Hill Meeting-House would be one of the best
+preserved and pleasantest churches in the whole State of Maine, if only
+it were suitably carpeted.
+
+This thought had secretly occurred to many a Dorcas in her hours of pie-
+making, preserving, or cradle-rocking, but had been promptly extinguished
+as flagrantly extravagant and altogether impossible.  Now that it had
+been openly mentioned, the contagion of the idea spread, and in a month
+every sort of honest machinery for the increase of funds had been set in
+motion: harvest suppers, pie sociables, old folk's concerts, apron sales,
+and, as a last resort, a subscription paper, for the church floor
+measured hundreds of square yards, and the carpet committee announce that
+a good ingrain could not be purchased, even with the church discount, for
+less than ninety-seven cents a yard.
+
+The Dorcases took out their pencils, and when they multiplied the surface
+of the floor by the price of the carpet per yard, each Dorcas attaining a
+result entirely different from all the others, there was a shriek of
+dismay, especially from the secretary, who had included in her
+mathematical operation certain figures in her possession representing the
+cubical contents of the church and the offending pitch of the roof,
+thereby obtaining a product that would have dismayed a Croesus.  Time
+sped and efforts increased, but the Dorcases were at length obliged to
+clip the wings of their desire and content themselves with carpeting the
+pulpit and pulpit steps, the choir, and the two aisles, leaving the floor
+in the pews until some future year.
+
+How the women cut and contrived and matched that hardly-bought red
+ingrain carpet, in the short December afternoons that ensued after its
+purchase; so that, having failed to be ready for Thanksgiving, it could
+be finished for the Christmas festivities!
+
+They were sewing in the church, and as the last stitches were being
+taken, Maria Sharp suddenly ejaculated in her impulsive fashion:--
+
+"Wouldn't it have been just perfect if we could have had the pews
+repainted before we laid the new carpet!"
+
+"It would, indeed," the president answered; "but it will take us all
+winter to pay for the present improvements, without any thought of fresh
+paint.  If only we had a few more men-folks to help along!"
+
+"Or else none at all!" was Lobelia Brewster's suggestion.  "It's havin'
+so few that keeps us all stirred up.  If there wa'n't any anywheres, we'd
+have women deacons and carpenters and painters, and get along first rate;
+for somehow the supply o' women always holds out, same as it does with
+caterpillars an' flies an' grasshoppers!"
+
+Everybody laughed, although Maria Sharp asserted that she for one was not
+willing to be called a caterpillar simply because there were too many
+women in the universe.
+
+"I never noticed before how shabby and scarred and dirty the pews are,"
+said the minister's wife as she looked at them reflectively.
+
+"I've been thinking all the afternoon of the story about the poor old
+woman and the lily," and Nancy Wentworth's clear voice broke into the
+discussion.  "Do you remember some one gave her a stalk of Easter lilies
+and she set them in a glass pitcher on the kitchen table?  After looking
+at them for a few minutes, she got up from her chair and washed the
+pitcher until the glass shone.  Sitting down again, she glanced at the
+little window.  It would never do; she had forgotten how dusty and
+blurred it was, and she took her cloth and burnished the panes.  Then she
+scoured the table, then the floor, then blackened the stove before she
+sat down to her knitting.  And of course the lily had done it all, just
+by showing, in its whiteness, how grimy everything else was."
+
+The minister's wife who had been in Edgewood only a few months, looked
+admiringly at Nancy's bright face, wondering that five-and-thirty years
+of life, including ten of school-teaching, had done so little to mar its
+serenity.  "The lily story is as true as the gospel!" she exclaimed, "and
+I can see how one thing has led you to another in making the church
+comfortable.  But my husband says that two coats of paint on the pews
+would cost a considerable sum."
+
+"How about cleaning them?  I don't believe they've had a good hard
+washing since the flood."  The suggestion came from Deacon Miller's wife
+to the president.
+
+"They can't even be scrubbed for less than fifteen or twenty dollars, for
+I thought of that and asked Mrs. Simpson yesterday, and she said twenty
+cents a pew was the cheapest she could do it for."
+
+"We've done everything else," said Nancy Wentworth, with a twitch of her
+thread; "why don't we scrub the pews?  There's nothing in the orthodox
+creed to forbid, is there?"
+
+"Speakin' o' creeds," and here old Mrs. Sargent paused in her work,
+"Elder Ransom from Acreville stopped with us last night, an' he tells me
+they recite the Euthanasian Creed every few Sundays in the Episcopal
+Church.  I didn't want him to know how ignorant I was, but I looked up
+the word in the dictionary.  It means easy death, and I can't see any
+sense in that, though it's a terrible long creed, the Elder says, an' if
+it's any longer 'n ourn, I should think anybody _might_ easy die learnin'
+it!"
+
+"I think the word is Athanasian," ventured the minister's wife.
+
+"Elder Ransom's always plumb full o' doctrine," asserted Miss Brewster,
+pursuing the subject.  "For my part, I'm glad he preferred Acreville to
+our place.  He was so busy bein' a minister, he never got round to bein'
+a human creeter.  When he used to come to sociables and picnics, always
+lookin' kind o' like the potato blight, I used to think how complete he'd
+be if he had a foldin' pulpit under his coat tails; they make foldin'
+beds nowadays, an' I s'pose they could make foldin' pulpits, if there was
+a call."
+
+"Land sakes, I hope there won't be!" exclaimed Mrs. Sargent.  "An' the
+Elder never said much of anything either, though he was always preachin'!
+Now your husband, Mis' Baxter, always has plenty to say after you think
+he's all through.  There's water in his well when the others is all dry!"
+
+"But how about the pews?" interrupted Mrs. Burbank.  "I think Nancy's
+idea is splendid, and I want to see it carried out.  We might make it a
+picnic, bring our luncheons, and work all together; let every woman in
+the congregation come and scrub her own pew."
+
+"Some are too old, others live at too great a distance," and the
+minister's wife sighed a little; "indeed, most of those who once owned
+the pews or sat in them seemed to be dead, or gone away to live in busier
+places."
+
+"I've no patience with 'em, gallivantin' over the earth," and here
+Lobelia rose and shook the carpet threads from her lap.  "I shouldn't
+want to live in a livelier place than Edgewood, seem's though!  We wash
+and hang out Mondays, iron Tuesdays, cook Wednesdays, clean house and
+mend Thursdays and Fridays, bake Saturdays, and go to meetin' Sundays.  I
+don't hardly see how they can do any more 'n that in Chicago!"
+
+"Never mind if we have lost members!" said the indomitable Mrs. Burbank.
+"The members we still have left must work all the harder.  We'll each
+clean our own pew, then take a few of our neighbours', and then hire Mrs.
+Simpson to do the wainscoting and floor.  Can we scrub Friday and lay the
+carpet Saturday?  My husband and Deacon Miller can help us at the end of
+the week.  All in favour manifest it by the usual sign.  Contrary minded?
+It is a vote."
+
+There never were any contrary minded when Mrs. Jere Burbank was in the
+chair.  Public sentiment in Edgewood was swayed by the Dorcas Society,
+but Mrs. Burbank swayed the Dorcases themselves as the wind sways the
+wheat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The old Meeting House wore an animated aspect when the eventful Friday
+came, a cold, brilliant, sparkling December day, with good sleighing, and
+with energy in every breath that swept over the dazzling snowfields.  The
+sexton had built a fire in the furnace on the way to his morning work--a
+fire so economically contrived that it would last exactly the four or
+five necessary hours, and not a second more.  At eleven o'clock all the
+pillars of the society had assembled, having finished their own household
+work and laid out on their respective kitchen tables comfortable
+luncheons for the men of the family, if they were fortunate enough to
+number any among their luxuries.  Water was heated upon oil-stoves set
+about here and there, and there was a brave array of scrubbing-brushes,
+cloths, soap, and even sand and soda, for it had been decided and
+manifested-by-the-usual-sign-and-no-contrary-minded-and-it-was-a-vote
+that the dirt was to come off, whether the paint came with it or not.
+Each of the fifteen women present selected a block of seats, preferably
+one in which her own was situated, and all fell busily to work.
+
+"There is nobody here to clean the right-wing pews," said Nancy
+Wentworth, "so I will take those for my share."
+
+"You're not making a very wise choice, Nancy," and the minister's wife
+smiled as she spoke.  "The infant class of the Sunday-school sits there,
+you know, and I expect the paint has had extra wear and tear.  Families
+don't seem to occupy those pews regularly nowadays."
+
+"I can remember when every seat in the whole church was filled, wings an'
+all," mused Mrs. Sargent, wringing out her wascloth in a reminiscent
+mood.  "The one in front o' you, Nancy, was always called the 'deef pew'
+in the old times, and all the folks that was hard o' hearin' used to
+congregate there."
+
+"The next pew hasn't been occupied since I came here," said the
+minister's wife.
+
+"No," answered Mrs. Sargent, glad of any opportunity to retail
+neighbourhood news.  "'Squire Bean's folks have moved to Portland to be
+with the married daughter.  Somebody has to stay with her, and her
+husband won't.  The 'Squire ain't a strong man, and he's most too old to
+go to meetin' now.  The youngest son has just died in New York, so I
+hear."
+
+"What ailed him?" inquired Maria Sharp.
+
+"I guess he was completely wore out takin' care of his health," returned
+Mrs. Sargent.  "He had a splendid constitution from a boy, but he was
+always afraid it wouldn't last him.--The seat back o' 'Squire Bean's is
+the old Peabody pew--ain't that the Peabody pew you're scrubbin', Nancy?"
+
+"I believe so," Nancy answered, never pausing in her labours.  "It's so
+long since anybody sat there, it's hard to remember."
+
+"It is the Peabodys', I know it, because the aisle runs right up facin'
+it.  I can see old Deacon Peabody settin' in this end same as if 'twas
+yesterday."
+
+"He had died before Jere and I came back here to live," said Mrs.
+Burbank.  "The first I remember, Justin Peabody sat in the end seat; the
+sister that died, next, and in the corner, against the wall, Mrs.
+Peabody, with a crepe shawl and a palm-leaf fan.  They were a handsome
+family.  You used to sit with them sometimes, Nancy; Esther was great
+friends with you."
+
+"Yes, she was," Nancy replied, lifting the tattered cushion from its
+place and brushing it; "and I with her.--What is the use of scrubbing and
+carpeting, when there are only twenty pew-cushions and six hassocks in
+the whole church, and most of them ragged?  How can I ever mend this?"
+
+"I shouldn't trouble myself to darn other people's cushions!"
+
+This unchristian sentiment came in Mrs. Miller's ringing tones from the
+rear of the church.
+
+"I don't know why," argued Maria Sharp.  "I'm going to mend my Aunt
+Achsa's cushion, and we haven't spoken for years; but hers is the next
+pew to mine, and I'm going to have my part of the church look decent,
+even if she is too stingy to do her share.  Besides, there aren't any
+Peabodys left to do their own darning, and Nancy was friends with
+Esther."
+
+"Yes, it's nothing more than right," Nancy replied, with a note of relief
+in her voice, "considering Esther."
+
+"Though he don't belong to the scrubbin' sex, there is one Peabody alive,
+as you know, if you stop to think, Maria; for Justin's alive, and livin'
+out West somewheres.  At least, he's as much alive as ever he was; he was
+as good as dead when he was twenty-one, but his mother was always too
+soft-hearted to bury him."
+
+There was considerable laughter over this sally of the outspoken Mrs.
+Sargent, whose keen wit was the delight of the neighbourhood.
+
+"I know he's alive and doing business in Detroit, for I got his address a
+week or ten days ago, and wrote, asking him if he'd like to give a couple
+of dollars toward repairing the old church."
+
+Everybody looked at Mrs. Burbank with interest.
+
+"Hasn't he answered?" asked Maria Sharp.
+
+Nancy Wentworth held her breath, turned her face to the wall, and
+silently wiped the paint of the wainscoting.  The blood that had rushed
+into her cheeks at Mrs. Sargent's jeering reference to Justin Peabody
+still lingered there for any one who ran to read, but fortunately nobody
+ran; they were too busy scrubbing.
+
+"Not yet.  Folks don't hurry about answering when you ask them for a
+contribution," replied the president, with a cynicism common to persons
+who collect funds for charitable purposes.  "George Wickham sent me
+twenty-five cents from Denver.  When I wrote him a receipt, I said thank
+you same as Aunt Polly did when the neighbours brought her a piece of
+beef: 'Ever so much obleeged, but don't forget me when you come to kill a
+pig.'--Now, Mrs. Baxter, you shan't clean James Bruce's pew, or what was
+his before he turned Second Advent.  I'll do that myself, for he used to
+be in my Sunday-school class."
+
+"He's the backbone o' that congregation now," asserted Mrs. Sargent, "and
+they say he's goin' to marry Mrs. Sam Peters, who sings in their choir as
+soon as his year is up.  They make a perfect fool of him in that church."
+
+"You can't make a fool of a man that nature ain't begun with," argued
+Miss Brewster.  "Jim Bruce never was very strong-minded, but I declare it
+seems to me that when men lose their wives, they lose their wits!  I was
+sure Jim would marry Hannah Thompson that keeps house for him.  I
+suspected she was lookin' out for a life job when she hired out with
+him."
+
+"Hannah Thompson may keep Jim's house, but she'll never keep Jim, that's
+certain!" affirmed the president; "and I can't see that Mrs. Peters will
+better herself much."
+
+"I don't blame her, for one!" came in no uncertain tones from the left-
+wing pews, and the Widow Buzzell rose from her knees and approached the
+group by the pulpit.  "If there's anything duller than cookin' three
+meals a day _for_ yourself, and settin' down and eatin' 'em _by_
+yourself, and then gettin' up and clearin' 'em away _after_ yourself, I'd
+like to know it!  I shouldn't want any good-lookin', pleasant-spoken man
+to offer himself to me without he expected to be snapped up, that's all!
+But if you've made out to get one husband in York County, you can thank
+the Lord and not expect any more favours.  I used to think Tom was poor
+comp'ny and complain I couldn't have any conversation with him, but land,
+I could talk at him, and there's considerable comfort in that.  And I
+could pick up after him!  Now every room in my house is clean, and every
+closet and bureau drawer, too; I can't start drawin' in another rug, for
+I've got all the rugs I can step foot on.  I dried so many apples last
+year I shan't need to cut up any this season.  My jelly and preserves
+ain't out, and there I am; and there most of us are, in this village,
+without a man to take steps for and trot 'round after!  There's just
+three husbands among the fifteen women scrubbin' here now, and the rest
+of us is all old maids and widders.  No wonder the men-folks die, or move
+away like Justin Peabody; a place with such a mess o' women-folks ain't
+healthy to live in, whatever Lobelia Brewster may say."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Justin Peabody had once faithfully struggled with the practical
+difficulties of life in Edgewood, or so he had thought, in those old days
+of which Nancy Wentworth was thinking as she wiped the paint of the
+Peabody pew.  Work in the mills did not attract him; he had no capital to
+invest in a stock of goods for store-keeping; school-teaching offered him
+only a pittance; there remained then only the farm, if he were to stay at
+home and keep his mother company.
+
+"Justin don't seem to take no holt of things," said the neighbours.
+
+"Good Heavens!"  It seemed to him that there were no things to take hold
+of!  That was his first thought; later he grew to think that the trouble
+all lay in himself, and both thoughts bred weakness.
+
+The farm had somehow supported the family in the old Deacon's time, but
+Justin seemed unable to coax a competence from the soil.  He could, and
+did, rise early and work late; till the earth, sow crops; but he could
+not make the rain fall nor the sun shine at the times he needed them, and
+the elements, however much they might seem to favour his neighbours,
+seldom smiled on his enterprises.  The crows liked Justin's corn better
+than any other in Edgewood.  It had a richness peculiar to itself, a
+quality that appealed to the most jaded palate, so that it was really
+worth while to fly over a mile of intervening fields and pay it the
+delicate compliment of preference.
+
+Justin could explain the attitude of caterpillars, worms, grasshoppers,
+and potato-bugs toward him only by assuming that he attracted them as the
+magnet in the toy boxes attracts the miniature fishes.
+
+"Land of liberty! look at 'em congregate!" ejaculated Jabe Slocum, when
+he was called in for consultation.  "Now if you'd gone in for breedin'
+insecks, you could be as proud as Cuffy an' exhibit 'em at the County
+Fair!  They'd give yer prizes for size an' numbers an' speed, I guess!
+Why, say, they're real crowded for room--the plants ain't give 'em enough
+leaves to roost on!  Have you tried 'Bug Death'?"
+
+"It acts like a tonic on them," said Justin gloomily.
+
+"Sho! you don't say so!  Now mine can't abide the sight nor smell of it.
+What 'bout Paris green?"
+
+"They thrive on it; it's as good as an appetizer."
+
+"Well," said Jabe Slocum, revolving the quid of tobacco in his mouth
+reflectively, "the bug that ain't got no objection to p'ison is a bug
+that's got ways o' thinkin' an' feelin' an' reasonin' that I ain't able
+to cope with!  P'r'aps it's all a leadin' o' Providence.  Mebbe it shows
+you'd ought to quit farmin' crops an' take to raisin' live stock!"
+
+Justin did just that, as a matter of fact, a year or two later; but stock
+that has within itself the power of being "live" has also rare
+qualifications for being dead when occasion suits, and it generally did
+suit Justin's stock.  It proved prone not only to all the general
+diseases that cattle-flesh is heir to, but was capable even of suicide.
+At least, it is true that two valuable Jersey calves, tied to stakes on
+the hillside, had flung themselves violently down the bank and strangled
+themselves with their own ropes in a manner which seemed to show that
+they found no pleasure in existence, at all events on the Peabody farm.
+
+These were some of the little tragedies that had sickened young Justin
+Peabody with life in Edgewood, and Nancy Wentworth, even then, realized
+some of them and sympathized without speaking, in a girl's poor, helpless
+way.
+
+Mrs. Simpson had washed the floor in the right wing of the church and
+Nancy had cleaned all the paint.  Now she sat in the old Peabody pew
+darning the forlorn, faded cushion with grey carpet-thread: thread as
+grey as her own life.
+
+The scrubbing-party had moved to its labours in a far corner of the
+church, and two of the women were beginning preparations for the basket
+luncheons.  Nancy's needle was no busier than her memory.  Long years ago
+she had often sat in the Peabody pew, sometimes at first as a girl of
+sixteen when asked by Esther, and then, on coming home from school at
+eighteen, "finished," she had been invited now and again by Mrs. Peabody
+herself, on those Sundays when her own invalid mother had not attended
+service.
+
+Those were wonderful Sundays--Sundays of quiet, trembling peace and
+maiden joy.
+
+Justin sat beside her, and she had been sure then, but had long since
+grown to doubt the evidence of her senses, that he, too, vibrated with
+pleasure at the nearness.  Was there not a summer morning when his hand
+touched her white lace mitt as they held the hymn-book together, and the
+lines of the
+
+   Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
+   Thy better portion trace,
+
+became blurred on the page and melted into something indistinguishable
+for a full minute or two afterward?  Were there not looks, and looks, and
+looks?  Or had she some misleading trick of vision in those days?
+Justin's dark, handsome profile rose before her: the level brows and fine
+lashes; the well-cut nose and lovable mouth--the Peabody mouth and chin,
+somewhat too sweet and pliant for strength, perhaps.  Then the eyes
+turned to hers in the old way, just for a fleeting glance, as they had so
+often done at prayer-meeting, or sociable, or Sunday service.  Was it not
+a man's heart she had seen in them?  And oh, if she could only be sure
+that her own woman's heart had not looked out from hers, drawn from its
+maiden shelter in spite of all her wish to keep it hidden!
+
+Then followed two dreary years of indecision and suspense, when Justin's
+eyes met hers less freely; when his looks were always gloomy and anxious;
+when affairs at the Peabody farm grew worse and worse; when his mother
+followed her husband, the old Deacon, and her daughter Esther to the
+burying-ground in the churchyard.  Then the end of all things came, the
+end of the world for Nancy: Justin's departure for the West in a very
+frenzy of discouragement over the narrowness and limitation and injustice
+of his lot; over the rockiness and barrenness and unkindness of the New
+England soil; over the general bitterness of fate and the "bludgeonings
+of chance."
+
+He was a failure, born of a family of failures.  If the world owed him a
+living, he had yet to find the method by which it could be earned.  All
+this he thought and uttered, and much more of the same sort.  In these
+days of humbled pride self was paramount, though it was a self he
+despised.  There was no time for love.  Who was he for a girl to lean
+upon?--he who could not stand erect himself!
+
+He bade a stiff good-bye to his neighbours, and to Nancy he vouchsafed
+little more.  A handshake, with no thrill of love in it such as might
+have furnished her palm, at least, some memories to dwell upon; a few
+stilted words of leave-taking; a halting, meaningless sentence or two
+about his "botch" of life--then he walked away from the Wentworth
+doorstep.  But half way down the garden path, where the shrivelled
+hollyhocks stood like sentinels, did a wave of something different sweep
+over him--a wave of the boyish, irresponsible past when his heart had
+wings and could fly without fear to its mate--a wave of the past that was
+rushing through Nancy's mind, well-nigh burying her in its bitter-sweet
+waters!  For he lifted his head, and suddenly retracing his steps, he
+came toward her, and, taking her hand again, said forlornly: "You'll see
+me back when my luck turns, Nancy."
+
+Nancy knew that the words might mean little or much, according to the
+manner in which they were uttered, but to her hurt pride and sore, shamed
+woman-instinct, they were a promise, simply because there was a choking
+sound in Justin's voice and tears in Justin's eyes.  "You'll see me back
+when my luck turns, Nancy;" this was the phrase upon which she had lived
+for more than ten years.  Nancy had once heard the old parson say, ages
+ago, that the whole purpose of life was the growth of the soul; that we
+eat, sleep, clothe ourselves, work, love, all to give the soul another
+day, month, year, in which to develop.  She used to wonder if her soul
+could be growing in the monotonous round of her dull duties and her
+duller pleasures.  She did not confess it even to herself; nevertheless
+she knew that she worked, ate, slept, to live until Justin's luck turned.
+Her love had lain in her heart a bird without a song, year after year.
+Her mother had dwelt by her side and never guessed; her father too; and
+both were dead.  The neighbours also, lynx-eyed and curious, had never
+suspected.  If she had suffered, no one in Edgewood was any the wiser,
+for the maiden heart is not commonly worn on the sleeve in New England.
+If she had been openly pledged to Justin Peabody, she could have waited
+twice ten years with a decent show of self-respect, for long engagements
+were viewed rather as a matter of course in that neighbourhood.  The
+endless months had gone on since that grey November day when Justin had
+said good-bye.  It had been just before Thanksgiving, and she went to
+church with an aching and ungrateful heart.  The parson read from the
+eighth chapter of St. Matthew, a most unexpected selection for that
+holiday.  "If you can't find anything else to be thankful for," he cried,
+"go home and be thankful you are not a leper!"
+
+Nancy took the drastic counsel away from the church with her, and it was
+many a year before she could manage to add to this slender store anything
+to increase her gratitude for mercies given, though all the time she was
+outwardly busy, cheerful, and helpful.
+
+Justin had once come back to Edgewood, and it was the bitterest drop in
+her cup of bitterness that she was spending that winter in Berwick
+(where, so the neighbours told him, she was a great favourite in society,
+and was receiving much attention from gentlemen), so that she had never
+heard of his visit until the spring had come again.  Parted friends did
+not keep up with one another's affairs by means of epistolary
+communication, in those days, in Edgewood; it was not the custom.  Spoken
+words were difficult enough to Justin Peabody, and written words were
+quite impossible, especially if they were to be used to define his half-
+conscious desires and his fluctuations of will, or to recount his
+disappointments and discouragements and mistakes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+It was Saturday afternoon, the twenty-fourth of December, and the weary
+sisters of the Dorcas band rose from their bruised knees and removed
+their little stores of carpet-tacks from their mouths.  This was a
+feminine custom of long standing, and as no village dressmaker had ever
+died of pins in the digestive organs, so were no symptoms of carpet-tacks
+ever discovered in any Dorcas, living or dead.  Men wondered at the habit
+and reviled it, but stood confounded in the presence of its indubitable
+harmlessness.
+
+The red ingrain carpet was indeed very warm, beautiful, and comforting to
+the eye, and the sisters were suitably grateful to Providence, and
+devoutly thankful to themselves, that they had been enabled to buy, sew,
+and lay so many yards of it.  But as they stood looking at their
+completed task, it was cruelly true that there was much left to do.
+
+The aisles had been painted dark brown on each side of the red strips
+leading from the doors to the pulpit, but the rest of the church floor
+was "a thing of shreds and patches."  Each member of the carpet committee
+had paid (as a matter of pride, however ill she could afford it) three
+dollars and sixty-seven cents for sufficient carpet to lay in her own
+pew; but these brilliant spots of conscientious effort only made the
+stretches of bare, unpainted floor more evident.  And that was not all.
+Traces of former spasmodic and individual efforts desecrated the present
+ideals.  The doctor's pew had a pink and blue Brussels on it; the
+lawyer's, striped stair-carpeting; the Browns from Deerwander sported
+straw matting and were not abashed; while the Greens, the Whites, the
+Blacks and the Greys displayed floor coverings as dissimilar as their
+names.
+
+"I never noticed it before!" exclaimed Maria Sharp, "but it ain't
+Christian, that floor! it's heathenish and ungodly!"
+
+"For mercy's sake, don't swear, Maria," said Mrs. Miller nervously.
+"We've done our best, and let's hope that folks will look up and not
+down.  It isn't as if they were going to set in the chandelier; they'll
+have something else to think about when Nancy gets her hemlock branches
+and white carnations in the pulpit vases.  This morning my Abner picked
+off two pinks from the plant I've been nursing in my dining-room for
+weeks, trying to make it bloom for Christmas.  I slapped his hands good,
+and it's been haunting me ever since to think I had to correct him the
+day before Christmas--Come, Lobelia, we must be hurrying!"
+
+"One thing comforts me," exclaimed the Widow Buzzell, as she took her
+hammer and tacks preparatory to leaving; "and that is that the Methodist
+meetin'-house ain't got any carpet at all."
+
+"Mrs. Buzzell, Mrs. Buzzell!" interrupted the minister's wife, with a
+smile that took the sting from her speech.  "It will be like punishing
+little Abner Miller; if we think those thoughts on Christmas Eve, we
+shall surely be haunted afterward."
+
+"And anyway," interjected Maria Sharp, who always saved the situation,
+"you just wait and see if the Methodists don't say they'd rather have no
+carpet at all than have one that don't go all over the floor.  I know
+'em!" and she put on her hood and blanket-shawl as she gave one last fond
+look at the improvements.
+
+"I'm going home to get my supper, and come back afterward to lay the
+carpet in my pew; my beans and brown bread will be just right by now, and
+perhaps it will rest me a little; besides, I must feed 'Zekiel."
+
+As Nancy Wentworth spoke, she sat in a corner of her own modest rear
+seat, looking a little pale and tired.  Her waving dark hair had loosened
+and fallen over her cheeks, and her eyes gleamed from under it wistfully.
+Nowadays Nancy's eyes never had the sparkle of gazing into the future,
+but always the liquid softness that comes from looking backward.
+
+"The church will be real cold by then, Nancy," objected Mrs.
+Burbank.--"Good-night, Mrs. Baxter."
+
+"Oh, no!  I shall be back by half-past six, and I shall not work long.  Do
+you know what I believe I'll do, Mrs. Burbank, just through the holidays?
+Christmas and New Year's both coming on Sunday this year, there'll be a
+great many out to church, not counting the strangers that'll come to the
+special service to-morrow.  Instead of putting down my own pew carpet
+that'll never be noticed here in the back, I'll lay it in the old Peabody
+pew, for the red aisle-strip leads straight up to it; the ministers
+always go up that side, and it does look forlorn."
+
+"That's so!  And all the more because my pew, that's exactly opposite in
+the left wing, is new carpeted and cushioned," replied the president.  "I
+think it's real generous of you, Nancy, because the Riverboro folks,
+knowing that you're a member of the carpet committee, will be sure to
+notice, and think it's queer you haven't made an effort to carpet your
+own pew."
+
+"Never mind!" smiled Nancy wearily.  "Riverboro folks never go to bed on
+Saturday nights without wondering what Edgewood is thinking about them!"
+
+The minister's wife stood at her window watching Nancy as she passed the
+parsonage.
+
+"How wasted!  How wasted!" she sighed.  "Going home to eat her lonely
+supper and feed 'Zekiel . . . I can bear it for the others, but not for
+Nancy . . . Now she has lighted her lamp, now she has put fresh pine on
+the fire, for new smoke comes from the chimney.  Why should I sit down
+and serve my dear husband, and Nancy feed 'Zekiel?"
+
+There was some truth in Mrs. Baxter's feeling.  Mrs. Buzzell, for
+instance, had three sons; Maria Sharp was absorbed in her lame father and
+her Sunday-school work; and Lobelia Brewster would not have considered
+matrimony a blessing, even under the most favourable conditions.  But
+Nancy was framed and planned for other things, and 'Zekiel was an
+insufficient channel for her soft, womanly sympathy and her bright
+activity of mind and body.
+
+'Zekiel had lost his tail in a mowing-machine; 'Zekiel had the asthma,
+and the immersion of his nose in milk made him sneeze, so he was wont to
+slip his paw in and out of the dish and lick it patiently for five
+minutes together.  Nancy often watched him pityingly, giving him kind and
+gentle words to sustain his fainting spirit, but to-night she paid no
+heed to him, although he sneezed violently to attract her attention.
+
+She had put her supper on the lighted table by the kitchen window and was
+pouring out her cup of tea, when a boy rapped at the door.  "Here's a
+paper and a letter, Miss Wentworth," he said.  "It's the second this
+week, and they think over to the store that that Berwick widower must be
+settin' up and takin' notice!"
+
+She had indeed received a letter the day before, an unsigned
+communication, consisting only of the words, "Second Epistle of John.
+Verse 12."
+
+She had taken her Bible to look out the reference and found it to be:--
+
+"Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and
+ink; but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy
+may be full."
+
+The envelope was postmarked New York, and she smiled, thinking that Mrs.
+Emerson, a charming lady who had spent the summer in Edgewood, and had
+sung with her in the village choir, was coming back, as she had promised,
+to have a sleigh ride and see Edgewood in its winter dress.  Nancy had
+almost forgotten the first letter in the excitements of her busy day, and
+now here was another, from Boston this time.  She opened the envelope and
+found again only a single sentence, printed, not written.  (Lest she
+should guess the hand, she wondered?)
+
+"Second Epistle of John.  Verse 5."
+
+"And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment
+unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one
+another."
+
+Was it Mrs. Emerson?  Could it be--any one else?  Was it--?  No, it might
+have been, years ago; but not now; not now!--And yet; he was always so
+different from other people; and once, in church, he had handed her the
+hymn-book with his finger pointing to a certain verse.
+
+She always fancied that her secret fidelity of heart rose from the fact
+that Justin Peabody was "different."  From the hour of their first
+acquaintance, she was ever comparing him with his companions, and always
+to his advantage.  So long as a woman finds all men very much alike (as
+Lobelia Brewster did, save that she allowed some to be worse!), she is in
+no danger.  But the moment in which she perceives and discriminates
+subtle differences, marvelling that there can be two opinions about a
+man's superiority, that moment the miracle has happened.
+
+"And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment
+unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one
+another."
+
+No, it could not be from Justin.  She drank her tea, played with her
+beans abstractedly, and nibbled her slice of steaming brown bread.
+
+"Not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee."
+
+No, not a new one; twelve, fifteen years old, that commandment!
+
+"That we love one another."
+
+Who was speaking?  Who had written these words?  The first letter sounded
+just like Mrs. Emerson, who had said she was a very poor correspondent,
+but that she should just "drop down" on Nancy one of these days; but this
+second letter never came from Mrs. Emerson.--Well, there would be an
+explanation some time; a pleasant one; one to smile over, and tell
+'Zekiel and repeat to the neighbours; but not an unexpected, sacred,
+beautiful explanation, such a one as the heart of a woman could imagine,
+if she were young enough and happy enough to hope.
+
+She washed her cup and plate; replaced the uneaten beans in the brown
+pot, and put them away with the round loaf, folded the cloth (Lobelia
+Brewster said Nancy always "set out her meals as if she was entertainin'
+company from Portland"), closed the stove dampers, carried the lighted
+lamp to a safe corner shelf, and lifted 'Zekiel to his cushion on the
+high-backed rocker, doing all with the nice precision of long habit.  Then
+she wrapped herself warmly, and locking the lonely little house behind
+her, set out to finish her work in the church.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+At this precise moment Justin Peabody was eating his own beans and brown
+bread (articles of diet of which his Detroit landlady was lamentably
+ignorant) at the new tavern, not far from the meeting-house.
+
+It would not be fair to him to say that Mrs. Burbank's letter had brought
+him back to Edgewood, but it had certainly accelerated his steps.
+
+For the first six years after Justin Peabody left home, he had drifted
+about from place to place, saving every possible dollar of his uncertain
+earnings in the conscious hope that he could go back to New England and
+ask Nancy Wentworth to marry him.  The West was prosperous and
+progressive, but how he yearned, in idle moments, for the grimmer and
+more sterile soil that had given him birth!
+
+Then came what seemed to him a brilliant chance for a lucky turn of his
+savings, and he invested them in an enterprise which, wonderfully as it
+promised, failed within six months and left him penniless.  At that
+moment he definitely gave up all hope, and for the next few years he put
+Nancy as far as possible out of his mind, in the full belief that he was
+acting an honourable part in refusing to drag her into his tangled and
+fruitless way of life.  If she ever did care for him,--and he could not
+be sure, she was always so shy,--she must have outgrown the feeling long
+since, and be living happily, or at least contentedly, in her own way.  He
+was glad in spite of himself when he heard that she had never married;
+but at least he hadn't it on his conscience that _he_ had kept her
+single!
+
+On the seventeenth of December, Justin, his business day over, was
+walking toward the dreary house in which he ate and slept.  As he turned
+the corner, he heard one woman say to another, as they watched a man
+stumbling sorrowfully down the street: "Going home will be the worst of
+all for him--to find nobody there!"  That was what going home had meant
+for him these ten years, but he afterward felt it strange that this
+thought should have struck him so forcibly on that particular day.
+Entering the boarding-house, he found Mrs. Burbank's letter with its
+Edgewood postmark on the hall table, and took it up to his room.  He
+kindled a little fire in the air-tight stove, watching the flame creep
+from shavings to kindlings, from kindlings to small pine, and from small
+pine to the round, hardwood sticks; then when the result seemed certain,
+he closed the stove door and sat down to read the letter.  Whereupon all
+manner of strange things happened in his head and heart and flesh and
+spirit as he sat there alone, his hands in his pockets, his feet braced
+against the legs of the stove.
+
+It was a cold winter night, and the snow and sleet beat against the
+windows.  He looked about the ugly room: at the washstand with its square
+of oilcloth in front and its detestable bowl and pitcher; at the rigours
+of his white iron bedstead, with the valley in the middle of the lumpy
+mattress and the darns in the rumpled pillowcases; at the dull
+photographs of the landlady's hideous husband and children enshrined on
+the mantelshelf; looked at the abomination of desolation surrounding him
+until his soul sickened and cried out like a child's for something more
+like home.  It was as if a spring thaw had melted his ice-bound heart,
+and on the crest of a wave it was drifting out into the milder waters of
+some unknown sea.  He could have laid his head in the kind lap of a woman
+and cried: "Comfort me!  Give me companionship or I die!"
+
+The wind howled in the chimney and rattled the loose window-sashes; the
+snow, freezing as it fell, dashed against the glass with hard, cutting
+little blows; at least, that is the way in which the wind and snow
+flattered themselves they were making existence disagreeable to Justin
+Peabody when he read the letter; but never were elements more mistaken.
+
+It was a June Sunday in the boarding-house bedroom; and for that matter
+it was not the boarding-house bedroom at all: it was the old Orthodox
+church on Tory Hill in Edgewood.
+
+The windows were wide open, and the smell of the purple clover and the
+humming of the bees were drifting into the sweet, wide spaces within.
+Justin was sitting in the end of the Peabody pew, and Nancy Wentworth was
+beside him; Nancy, cool and restful in her white dress; dark-haired Nancy
+under the shadow of her shirred muslin hat.
+
+   Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
+   Thy better portion trace.
+
+The melodeon gave the tune, and Nancy and he stood to sing, taking the
+book between them.  His hand touched hers, and as the music of the hymn
+rose and fell, the future unrolled itself before his eyes; a future in
+which Nancy was his wedded wife; and the happy years stretched on and on
+in front of them until there was a row of little heads in the old Peabody
+pew, and mother and father could look proudly along the line at the young
+things they were bringing into the house of the Lord.
+
+The recalling of that vision worked like magic in Justin's blood.  His
+soul rose and stretched its wings and "traced its better portion"
+vividly, as he sprang to his feet and walked up and down the bedroom
+floor.  He would get a few days' leave and go back to Edgewood for
+Christmas, to join, with all the old neighbours, in the service at the
+meeting-house; and in pursuance of this resolve, he shook his fist in the
+face of the landlady's husband on the mantelpiece and dared him to
+prevent.
+
+He had a salary of fifty dollars a month, with some very slight prospect
+of an increase after January.  He did not see how two persons could eat,
+and drink, and lodge, and dress on it in Detroit, but he proposed to give
+Nancy Wentworth the refusal of that magnificent future, that brilliant
+and tempting offer.  He had exactly one hundred dollars in the bank, and
+sixty or seventy of them would be spent in the journeys, counting two
+happy, blessed fares back from Edgewood to Detroit; and if he paid only
+his own fare back, he would throw the price of the other into the pond
+behind the Wentworth house.  He would drop another ten dollars into the
+plate on Christmas Day toward the repairs on the church; if he starved,
+he would do that.  He was a failure.  Everything his hand touched turned
+to naught.  He looked himself full in the face, recognizing his weakness,
+and in this supremest moment of recognition he was a stronger man than he
+had been an hour before.  His drooping shoulders had straightened; the
+restless look had gone from his eyes; his sombre face had something of
+repose in it, the repose of a settled purpose.  He was a failure, but
+perhaps if he took the risks (and if Nancy would take them--but that was
+the trouble, women were so unselfish, they were always willing to take
+risks, and one ought not to let them!), perhaps he might do better in
+trying to make a living for two than he had in working for himself alone.
+He would go home, tell Nancy that he was an unlucky good-for-naught, and
+ask her if she would try her hand at making him over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+These were the reasons that had brought Justin Peabody to Edgewood on the
+Saturday afternoon before Christmas, and had taken him to the new tavern
+on Tory Hill, near the Meeting-House.
+
+Nobody recognized him at the station or noticed him at the tavern, and
+after his supper he put on his overcoat and started out for a walk,
+aimlessly hoping that he might meet a friend, or failing that, intending
+to call on some of his old neighbours, with the view of hearing the
+village news and securing some information which might help him to decide
+when he had better lay himself and his misfortunes at Nancy Wentworth's
+feet.  They were pretty feet!  He remembered that fact well enough under
+the magical influence of familiar sights and sounds and odours.  He was
+restless, miserable, anxious, homesick--not for Detroit, but for some
+heretofore unimagined good; yet, like Bunyan's shepherd boy in the Valley
+of Humiliation, he carried "the herb called Hearts-ease in his bosom,"
+for he was at last loving consciously.
+
+How white the old church looked, and how green the blinds!  It must have
+been painted very lately: that meant that the parish was fairly
+prosperous.  There were new shutters in the belfry tower, too; he
+remembered the former open space and the rusty bell, and he liked the
+change.  Did the chimney use to be in that corner?  No; but his father
+had always said it would have drawn better if it had been put there in
+the beginning.  New shingles within a year: that was evident to a
+practised eye.  He wondered if anything had been done to the inside of
+the building, but he must wait until the morrow to see, for, of course,
+the doors would be locked.  No; the one at the right side was ajar.  He
+opened it softly and stepped into the tiny square entry that he recalled
+so well--the one through which the Sunday-school children ran out to the
+steps from their catechism, apparently enjoying the sunshine after a
+spell of orthodoxy; the little entry where the village girls congregated
+while waiting for the last bell to ring--they made a soft blur of pink
+and blue and buff, a little flutter of curls and braids and fans and
+sunshades, in his mind's eye, as he closed the outer door behind him and
+gently opened the inner one.  The church was flooded with moonlight and
+snowlight, and there was one lamp burning at the back of the pulpit; a
+candle, too, on the pulpit steps.  There was the tip-tap-tip of a tack-
+hammer going on in a distant corner.  Was somebody hanging Christmas
+garlands?  The new red carpet attracted his notice, and as he grew
+accustomed to the dim light, it carried his eye along the aisle he had
+trod so many years of Sundays, to the old familiar pew.  The sound of the
+hammer ceased and a woman rose from her knees.  A stranger was doing for
+the family honour what he ought himself to have done.  The woman turned
+to shake her skirt, and it was Nancy Wentworth.  He might have known it.
+Women were always faithful; they always remembered old landmarks, old
+days, old friends, old duties.  His father and mother and Esther were all
+gone; who but dear Nancy would have made the old Peabody pew right and
+tidy for the Christmas festival?  Bless her kind womanly heart!
+
+She looked just the same to him as when he last saw her.  Mercifully he
+seemed to have held in remembrance all these years not so much her
+youthful bloom as her general qualities of mind and heart: her
+cheeriness, her spirit, her unflagging zeal, her bright womanliness.  Her
+grey dress was turned up in front over a crimson moreen petticoat.  She
+had on a cosy jacket, a fur turban of some sort with a redbreast in it,
+and her cheeks were flushed from exertion.  "Sweet records, and promises
+as sweet," had always met in Nancy's face, and either he had forgotten
+how pretty she was, or else she had absolutely grown prettier during his
+absence.
+
+Nancy would have chosen the supreme moment of meeting very differently,
+but she might well have chosen worse.  She unpinned her skirt and brushed
+the threads off, smoothed the pew cushions carefully, and took a last
+stitch in the ragged hassock.  She then lifted the Bible and the hymn-
+book from the rack, and putting down a bit of flannel on the pulpit
+steps, took a flatiron from an oil-stove, and opening the ancient books,
+pressed out the well-thumbed leaves one by one with infinite care.  After
+replacing the volumes in their accustomed place, she first extinguished
+the flame of her stove, which she tucked out of sight, and then blew out
+the lamp and the candle.  The church was still light enough for objects
+to be seen in a shadowy way, like the objects in a dream, and Justin did
+not realize that he was a man in the flesh, looking at a woman; spying,
+it might be, upon her privacy.  He was one part of a dream and she
+another, and he stood as if waiting, and fearing, to be awakened.
+
+Nancy, having done all, came out of the pew, and standing in the aisle,
+looked back at the scene of her labours with pride and content.  And as
+she looked, some desire to stay a little longer in the dear old place
+must have come over her, or some dread of going back to her lonely
+cottage, for she sat down in Justin's corner of the pew with folded
+hands, her eyes fixed dreamily on the pulpit and her ears hearing: "Not
+as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from
+the beginning."
+
+Justin's grasp on the latch tightened as he prepared to close the door
+and leave the place, but his instinct did not warn him quickly enough,
+after all, for, obeying some uncontrollable impulse, Nancy suddenly fell
+on her knees in the pew and buried her face in the cushions.
+
+The dream broke, and in an instant Justin was a man--worse than that, he
+was an eavesdropper, ashamed of his unsuspected presence.  He felt
+himself standing, with covered head and feet shod, in the holy temple of
+a woman's heart.
+
+But his involuntary irreverence brought abundant grace with it.  The
+glimpse and the revelation wrought their miracles silently and
+irresistibly, not by the slow processes of growth which Nature demands
+for her enterprises, but with the sudden swiftness of the spirit.  In an
+instant changes had taken place in Justin's soul which his so-called
+"experiencing religion" twenty-five years back had been powerless to
+effect.  He had indeed been baptized then, but the recording angel could
+have borne witness that this second baptism fructified the first, and
+became the real herald of the new birth and the new creature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Justin Peabody silently closed the inner door, and stood in the entry
+with his head bent and his heart in a whirl until he should hear Nancy
+rise to her feet.  He must take this Heaven-sent chance of telling her
+all, but how do it without alarming her?
+
+A moment, and her step sounded in the stillness of the empty church.
+
+Obeying the first impulse, he passed through the outer door, and standing
+on the step, knocked once, twice, three times; then, opening it a little
+and speaking through the chink, he called, "Is Miss Nancy Wentworth
+here?"
+
+"I'm here!" in a moment came Nancy's answer, and then, with a little
+wondering tremor in her voice, as if a hint of the truth had already
+dawned: "What's wanted?"
+
+"You're wanted, Nancy, wanted badly, by Justin Peabody, come back from
+the West."
+
+The door opened wide, and Justin faced Nancy standing half-way down the
+aisle, her eyes brilliant, her lips parted.  A week ago Justin's
+apparition confronting her in the empty Meeting-House after nightfall,
+even had she been prepared for it as now, by his voice, would have
+terrified her beyond measure.  Now it seemed almost natural and
+inevitable.  She had spent these last days in the church where both of
+them had been young and happy together; the two letters had brought him
+vividly to mind, and her labour in the old Peabody pew had been one long
+excursion into the past in which he was the most prominent and the best-
+loved figure.
+
+"I said I'd come back to you when my luck turned, Nancy."
+
+These were so precisely the words she expected him to say, should she
+ever see him again face to face, that for an additional moment they but
+heightened her sense of unreality.
+
+"Well, the luck hasn't turned, after all, but I couldn't wait any longer.
+Have you given a thought to me all these years, Nancy?"
+
+"More than one, Justin"; for the very look upon his face, the tenderness
+of his voice, the attitude of his body, outran his words and told her
+what he had come home to say, told her that her years of waiting were
+over at last.
+
+"You ought to despise me for coming back again with only myself and my
+empty hands to offer you."
+
+How easy it was to speak his heart out in this dim and quiet place!  How
+tongue-tied he would have been, sitting on the black haircloth sofa in
+the Wentworth parlour and gazing at the open soapstone stove!
+
+"Oh, men are such fools!" cried Nancy, smiles and tears struggling
+together in her speech, as she sat down suddenly in her own pew and put
+her hands over her face.
+
+"They are," agreed Justin humbly, "but I've never stopped loving you,
+whenever I've had time for thinking or loving.  And I wasn't sure that
+you really cared anything about me; and how could I have asked you when I
+hadn't a dollar in the world?"
+
+"There are other things to give a woman besides dollars, Justin."
+
+"Are there?  Well, you shall have them all, every one of them, Nancy, if
+you can make up your mind to do without the dollars; for dollars seem to
+be just what I can't manage."
+
+Her hand was in his by this time, and they were sitting side by side in
+the cushionless, carpetless Wentworth pew.  The door stood open; the
+winter moon shone in upon them.  That it was beginning to grow cold in
+the church passed unnoticed.  The grasp of the woman's hand seemed to
+give the man new hope and courage, and Justin's warm, confiding, pleading
+pressure brought balm to Nancy, balm and healing for the wounds her pride
+had suffered; joy, too, half-conscious still, that her life need not be
+lived to the end in unfruitful solitude.  She had waited, "as some grey
+lake lies, full and smooth, awaiting the star below the twilight."  Justin
+Peabody might have been no other woman's star, but he was Nancy's!
+
+"Just you sitting beside me here makes me feel as if I'd been asleep or
+dead all these years, and just born over again," said Justin.  "I've led
+a respectable, hard-working, honest life, Nancy," he continued, "and I
+don't owe any man a cent; the trouble is that no man owes me one.  I've
+got enough money to pay two fares back to Detroit on Monday, although I
+was terribly afraid you wouldn't let me do it.  It'll need a good deal of
+thinking and planning, Nancy, for we shall be very poor."
+
+Nancy had been storing up fidelity and affection deep, deep in the hive
+of her heart all these years, and now the honey of her helpfulness stood
+ready to be gathered.
+
+"Could I keep hens in Detroit?" she asked.  "I can always make them pay."
+
+"Hens--in three rooms, Nancy?"
+
+Her face fell.  "And no yard?"
+
+"No yard."
+
+A moment's pause, and then the smile came.  "Oh, well, I've had yards and
+hens for thirty-five years.  Doing without them will be a change.  I can
+take in sewing."
+
+"No, you can't, Nancy.  I need your backbone and wits and pluck and
+ingenuity, but if I can't ask you to sit with your hands folded for the
+rest of your life, as I'd like to, you shan't use them for other people.
+You're marrying me to make a man of me, but I'm not marrying you to make
+you a drudge."
+
+His voice rang clear and true in the silence, and Nancy's heart vibrated
+at the sound.
+
+"Oh, Justin, Justin!" she whispered.  "There's something wrong somewhere,
+but we'll find it out together, you and I, and make it right.  You're not
+like a failure.  You don't even _look_ poor, Justin; there isn't a man in
+Edgewood to compare with you, or I should be washing his dishes and
+darning his stockings this minute.  And I am not a pauper!  There'll be
+the rent of my little house and a carload of my furniture, so you can put
+the three-room idea out of your mind, and your firm will offer you a
+larger salary when you tell them you have a wife to take care of.  Oh, I
+see it all, and it is as easy and bright and happy as can be!"
+
+Justin put his arm around her and drew her close, with such a throb of
+gratitude for her belief and trust that it moved him almost to tears.
+
+There was a long pause: then he said:--
+
+"Now I shall call for you to-morrow morning after the last bell has
+stopped ringing, and we will walk up the aisle together and sit in the
+old Peabody pew.  We shall be a nine-days' wonder anyway, but this will
+be equal to an announcement, especially if you take my arm.  We don't
+either of us like to be stared at, but this will show without a word what
+we think of each other and what we've promised to be to each other, and
+it's the only thing that will make me feel sure of you and settled in my
+mind after all these mistaken years.  Have you got the courage, Nancy?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder!  I guess if I've had courage enough to wait for you,
+I've got courage enough to walk up the aisle with you and marry you
+besides!" said Nancy.--"Now it is too late for us to stay here any
+longer, and you must see me only as far as my gate, for perhaps you
+haven't forgotten yet how interested the Brewsters are in their
+neighbours."
+
+They stood at the little Wentworth gate for a moment, hand close clasped
+in hand.  The night was clear, the air was cold and sparkling, but with
+nothing of bitterness in it; the sky was steely blue and the evening star
+glowed and burned like a tiny sun.  Nancy remembered the shepherd's song
+she had taught the Sunday-school children, and repeated softly:--
+
+   For I my sheep was watching
+   Beneath the silent skies,
+   When sudden, far to eastward,
+   I saw a star arise;
+   Then all the peaceful heavens
+   With sweetest music rang,
+   And glory, glory, glory!
+   The happy angels sang.
+
+   So I this night am joyful,
+   Though I can scarce tell why,
+   It seemeth me that glory
+   Hath met us very nigh;
+   And we, though poor and humble,
+   Have part in heavenly plan,
+   For, born to-night, the Prince of Peace
+   Shall rule the heart of man.
+
+Justin's heart melted within him like wax to the woman's vision and the
+woman's touch.
+
+"Oh, Nancy, Nancy!" he whispered.  "If I had brought my bad luck to you
+long, long ago, would you have taken me then, and have I lost years of
+such happiness as this?"
+
+"There are some things it is not best for a man to be certain about,"
+said Nancy, with a wise smile and a last good-night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+   "Ring out, sweet bells,
+   O'er woods and dells
+   Your lovely strains repeat,
+   While happy throngs
+   With joyous songs
+   Each accent gladly greet."
+
+Christmas morning in the old Tory Hill Meeting-House was felt by all of
+the persons who were present in that particular year to be a most
+exciting and memorable occasion.
+
+The old sexton quite outdid himself, for although he had rung the bell
+for more than thirty years, he had never felt greater pride or joy in his
+task.  Was not his son John home for Christmas, and John's wife, and a
+grandchild newly named Nathaniel for himself?  Were there not spareribs
+and turkeys and cranberries and mince pies on the pantry shelves, and
+barrels of rosy Baldwins in the cellar and bottles of mother's root beer
+just waiting to give a holiday pop?  The bell itself forgot its age and
+the suspicion of a crack that dulled its voice on a damp day, and,
+inspired by the bright, frosty air, the sexton's inspiring pull, and the
+Christmas spirit, gave out nothing but joyous tones.
+
+Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  It fired the ambitions of star scholars about to
+recite hymns and sing solos.  It thrilled little girls expecting dolls
+before night.  It excited beyond bearing dozens of little boys being
+buttoned into refractory overcoats.  Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  Mothers'
+fingers trembled when they heard it, and mothers' voices cried: "If that
+is the second bell, the children will never be ready in time!  Where are
+the overshoes?  Where are the mittens?  Hurry, Jack!  Hurry, Jennie!"
+Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  "Where's Sally's muff?  Where's father's fur cap?
+Is the sleigh at the door?  Are the hot soapstones in?  Have all of you
+your money for the contribution box?"
+
+Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  It was a blithe bell, a sweet, true bell, a holy
+bell, and to Justin, pacing his tavern room, as to Nancy, trembling in
+her maiden chamber, it rang a Christmas message:--
+
+   Awake, glad heart!  Arise and sing;
+   It is the birthday of thy King!
+
+The congregation filled every seat in the old Meeting-House.
+
+As Maria Sharp had prophesied, there was one ill-natured spinster from a
+rival village who declared that the church floor looked like Joseph's
+coat laid out smooth; but in the general chorus of admiration, approval,
+and good will, this envious speech, though repeated from mouth to mouth,
+left no sting.
+
+Another item of interest long recalled was the fact that on that august
+and unapproachable day the pulpit vases stood erect and empty, though
+Nancy Wentworth had filled them every Sunday since any one could
+remember.  This instance, though felt at the time to be of mysterious
+significance if the cause were ever revealed, paled into nothingness
+when, after the ringing of the last bell, Nancy Wentworth walked up the
+aisle on Justin Peabody's arm, and they took their seats side by side in
+the old family pew.
+
+("And consid'able close, too, though there was plenty o' room!")
+
+("And no one that I ever heard of so much as suspicioned that they had
+ever kept company!")
+
+("And do you s'pose she knew Justin was expected back when she scrubbed
+his pew a-Friday?")
+
+("And this explains the empty pulpit vases!")
+
+("And I always said that Nancy would make a real handsome couple if she
+ever got anybody to couple with!")
+
+During the unexpected and solemn procession of the two up the aisle the
+soprano of the village choir stopped short in the middle of the Doxology,
+and the three other voices carried it to the end without any treble.
+Also, among those present there were some who could not remember
+afterward the precise petitions wafted upward in the opening prayer.
+
+And could it be explained otherwise than by cheerfully acknowledging the
+bounty of an overruling Providence that Nancy Wentworth should have had a
+new winter dress for the first time in five years--a winter dress of dark
+brown cloth to match her beaver muff and victorine?  The existence of
+this toilette had been known and discussed in Edgewood for a month past,
+and it was thought to be nothing more than a proper token of respect from
+a member of the carpet committee to the general magnificence of the
+church on the occasion of its reopening after repairs.  Indeed, you could
+have identified every member of the Dorcas Society that Sunday morning by
+the freshness of her apparel.  The brown dress, then, was generally
+expected; but why the white cashmere waist with collar and cuffs of point
+lace, devised only and suitable only for the minister's wedding, where it
+first saw the light?
+
+"The white waist can only be explained as showing distinct hope!"
+whispered the minister's wife during the reading of the church notices.
+
+"To me it shows more than hope; I am very sure that Nancy would never
+take any wear out of that lace for hope; it means certainty!" answered
+Maria, who was always strong in the prophetic line.
+
+By sermon time Justin's identity had dawned upon most of the
+congregation.  A stranger to all but one or two at first, his presence in
+the Peabody pew brought his face and figure back, little by little, to
+the minds of the old parishioners.
+
+When the contribution plate was passed, the sexton always began at the
+right-wing pews, as all the sextons before him had done for a hundred
+years.  Every eye in the church was already turned upon Justin and Nancy,
+and it was with almost a gasp that those in the vicinity saw a ten dollar
+bill fall in the plate.  The sexton reeled, or, if that is too
+intemperate a word for a pillar of the church, the good man tottered, but
+caught hold of the pew rail with one hand, and, putting the thumb of his
+other over the bill, proceeded quickly to the next pew, lest the stranger
+should think better of his gift, or demand change, as had occasionally
+been done in the olden time.
+
+Nancy never fluttered an eyelash, but sat quietly by Justin's side with
+her bosom rising and falling under the beaver fur and her cold hands
+clasped tight in the little brown muff.  Far from grudging this
+appreciable part of their slender resources, she thrilled with pride to
+see Justin's offering fall in the plate.
+
+Justin was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice anything, but his
+munificent contribution had a most unexpected effect upon his reputation,
+after all; for on that day, and on many another later one, when his
+sudden marriage and departure with Nancy Wentworth were under discussion,
+the neighbours said to one another:--
+
+"Justin must be making money fast out West!  He put ten dollars in the
+contribution plate a-Sunday, and paid the minister ten more next day for
+marryin' him to Nancy; so the Peabody luck has turned at last!" which, as
+a matter of fact, it had.
+
+"And all the time," said the chairman of the carpet committee to the
+treasurer of the Dorcas Society--"all the time, little as she realized
+it, Nancy was laying the carpet in her own pew.  Now she's married to
+Justin she'll be the makin' of him, or I miss my guess.  You can't do a
+thing with men folks without they're right alongside where you can keep
+your eye and hand on 'em.  Justin's handsome and good and stiddy; all he
+need is some nice woman to put starch into him.  The Edgewood Peabodys
+never had a mite o' stiffenin' in 'em,--limp as dishrags, every blessed
+one!  Nancy Wentworth fairly rustles with starch.  Justin hadn't been
+engaged to her but a few hours when they walked up the aisle together,
+but did you notice the way he carried his head?  I declare I thought 't
+would fall off behind!  I shouldn't wonder a mite but they prospered and
+come back every summer to set in the old Peabody Pew."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD PEABODY PEW***
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