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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Homespun Tales, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+#18 in our series by Kate Douglas Wiggin.
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+Title: Homespun Tales
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+Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+Release Date: October, 2002  [Etext #3492]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Homespun Tales, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
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+This etext was prepared by A Elizabeth Warren MD, Sacramento,
+CA; aewarren2@aol.com
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+
+
+Homespun Tales
+
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+
+
+
+Introduction
+
+These three stories are now brought together under one cover because they have
+not quite outworn their welcome; but in their first estate two of them
+appeared as gift-books, with decorative borders and wide margins, a style not
+compatible with the stringent economies of the present moment. Luckily they
+belong together by reason of their background, which is an imaginary village,
+any village you choose, within the confines, or on the borders of York County,
+in the State of Maine.
+
+In the first tale the river, not "Rose," is the principal character; no one
+realizes this better than I. If an author spends her summers on the banks of
+Saco Water it fills the landscape. It flows from the White Mountains to the
+Atlantic in a tempestuous torrent, breaking here and there into glorious falls
+of amber glimpsed through snowy foam; its rapids dash through rocky cliffs
+crowned with pine trees, under which blue harebells and rosy columbines
+blossom in gay profusion. There is the glint of the mirror-like lake above the
+falls, and the sound of the surging floods below; the witchery of feathery
+elms reflected in its clear surfaces, and the enchantment of the full moon on
+its golden torrents, never twice alike and always beautiful! How is one to
+forget, evade, scorn, belittle it, by leaving its charms untold; and who could
+keep such a river out of a book? It has flowed through many of mine and the
+last sound I expect to hear in life will be the faint, far-away murmur of Saco
+Water!
+
+The old Tory Hill Meeting House bulks its way into the foreground of the next
+story, and the old Peabody Pew (which never existed) has somehow assumed a
+quasi-historical aspect never intended by its author. There is a Dorcas
+Society, and there is a meeting house; my dedication assures the reader of
+these indubitable facts; and the Dorcas Society, in a season of temporary
+bankruptcy, succeeding a too ample generosity, did scrub the pews when there
+was no money for paint. Rumors of our strenuous, and somewhat unique,
+activities spread through our parish to many others, traveling so far (even
+over seas) that we became embarrassed at our easily won fame. The book was
+read and people occasionally came to church to see the old Peabody Pew, rather
+resenting the information that there had never been any Peabodys in the parish
+and, therefore, there could be no Peabody Pew. Matters became worse when I
+made, very reverently, what I suppose must be called a dramatic version of the
+book, which we have played for several summers in the old meeting house to
+audiences far exceeding our seating capacity. Inasmuch as the imaginary
+love-tale of my so-called Nancy Wentworth and Justin Peabody had begun under
+the shadow of the church steeple, and after the ten years of parting the happy
+reunion had come to them in the selfsame place, it was possible to present
+their story simply and directly, without offense, in a church building. There
+was no curtain, no stage, no scenery, no theatricalism. The pulpit was moved
+back, and four young pine trees were placed in front of it for supposed
+Christmas decoration. The pulpit platform, and the "wing pews" left vacant for
+the village players, took the place of a stage; the two aisles served for
+exits and entrances; and the sexton with three rings of the church bell,
+announced the scenes. The Carpet Committee of the Dorcas Society furnished the
+exposition of the first act, while sewing the last breadths of the new,
+hardly-bought ingrain carpet. The scrubbing of the pews ends the act, with
+dialogue concerning men, women, ministers, church-members and their ways,
+including the utter failure of Justin Peabody, Nancy's hero, to make a living
+anywhere, even in the West. The Dorcas members leave the church for their
+Saturday night suppers of beans and brown bread, but Nancy returns with her
+lantern at nightfall to tack down the carpet in the old Peabody pew and iron
+out the tattered, dog's eared leaves of the hymn-book from which she has so
+often sung "By cool Siloam's shady rill" with her lover in days gone by. He,
+still a failure, having waited for years for his luck to turn, has come back
+to spend Christmas in the home of his boyhood; and seeing a dim light in the
+church, he enters quietly and surprises Nancy at her task of carpeting the
+Peabody Pew, so that it shall look as well as the others at next day's
+services. The rest is easy to imagine. One can deny the reality of a book, but
+when two or three thousand people have beheld Justin Peabody and Nancy
+Wentworth in the flesh, and have seen the paint of the old Peabody Pew wiped
+with a damp cloth, its cushion darned and its carpet tacked in place, it is
+useless to argue; any more than it would be to deny the validity of the egg of
+Columbus or the apple of William Tell.
+
+As for "Susanna and Sue" the story would never have been written had I not as
+a child and girl been driven once a year to the Shaker meeting at the little
+village of Alfred, sixteen miles distant. The services were then open to the
+public, but eventually permission to attend them was withdrawn, because of the
+careless and sometimes irreverent behavior of young people who regarded the
+Shaker costumes, the solemn dances or marches, the rhythmic movements of the
+hands, the almost hypnotic crescendo of the singing, as a sort of humorous
+spectacle. I learned to know the brethren and sisters, and the Elder, as years
+went by, and often went to the main house to spend a day or two as the guest
+of Eldress Harriet, a saint, if ever there was one, or, later, with dear
+Sister Lucinda.
+
+The shining cleanliness and order, the frugality and industry, the serenity
+and peace of these people, who had resigned the world and "life on the plane
+of Adam," vowing themselves to celibacy, to public confession of sins, and the
+holding of goods in common,--all this has always had a certain exquisite and
+helpful influence upon my thought, and Mr. W. D. Howells paid a far more
+beautiful tribute to them in "The Undiscovered Country."
+
+It is needless to say that I read every word of the book to my Shaker friends
+before it was published. They took a deep interest in it, evincing keen
+delight in my rather facetious but wholly imaginary portrait of "Brother
+Ansel," a "born Shaker," and sadly confessing that my two young lovers,
+"Hetty" and "Nathan," who could not endure the rigors of the Shaker faith and
+fled together in the night to marry and join the world's people,--that this
+tragedy had often occurred in their community.
+
+Here, then, are the three simple homespun tales. I believe they are true to
+life as I see it. I only wish my readers might hear the ripple of the Maine
+river running through them; breathe the fragrance of New England for-ests, and
+though never for a moment getting, through my poor pen, the atmosphere of
+Maine's rugged cliffs and the tang of her salt sea air, they might at least
+believe for an instant that they had found a modest Mayflower in her pine
+woods.
+
+KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN. July, 1920.
+
+ 
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+ROSE O' THE RIVER
+
+I. The Pine and the Rose
+II. The "Old Kennebec"
+III. The Edgewood "Drive"
+IV. "Blasphemious Swearin'"
+V. The Game of Jackstraws
+VI. Hearts and Other Hearts
+VII. The Little House
+VIII. The Garden of Eden
+IX. The Serpent
+X. The Turquoise Ring
+XI. Rose Sees the World
+XII. Gold and Pinchbeck
+XIII. A Country Chevalier
+XIV. Housebreaking
+XV. The Dream Room
+
+
+THE OLD PEABODY PEW
+
+
+SUSANNA AND SUE
+
+I. Mother Ann's Children
+II. A Son of Adam
+III. Divers Doctrines
+IV. Louisa's Mind
+V. the Little Quail Bird
+VI. Susanna Speaks in Meeting
+VII. "The Lower Plane"
+VIII. Concerning Backsliders
+IX. Love Manifold
+X. Brother and Sister
+XI. "The Open Door"
+XII. The Hills of Home
+
+
+
+
+
+ROSE O' THE RIVER
+
+
+
+I
+
+The Pine And the Rose
+
+
+It was not long after sunrise, and Stephen Waterman, fresh from his dip in the
+river, had scrambled up the hillside from the hut in the alder-bushes where he
+had made his morning toilet.
+
+An early ablution of this sort was not the custom of the farmers along the
+banks of the Saco, but the Waterman house was hardly a stone's throw from the
+water, and there was a clear, deep swimming-hole in the Willow Cove that would
+have tempted the busiest man, or the least cleanly, in York County. Then, too,
+Stephen was a child of the river, born, reared, schooled on its very brink,
+never happy unless he were on it, or in it, or beside it, or at least within
+sight or sound of it.
+
+The immensity of the sea had always silenced and overawed him, left him cold
+in feeling. The river wooed him, caressed him, won his heart. It was just big
+enough to love. It was full of charms and changes, of varying moods and sudden
+surprises. Its voice stole in upon his ear with a melody far sweeter and more
+subtle than the boom of the ocean. Yet it was not without strength, and when
+it was swollen with the freshets of the spring and brimming with the bounty of
+its sister streams, it could dash and roar, boom and crash, with the best of
+them.
+
+Stephen stood on the side porch, drinking in the glory of the sunrise, with
+the Saco winding like a silver ribbon through the sweet loveliness of the
+summer landscape.
+
+And the river rolled on toward the sea, singing its morning song, creating and
+nourishing beauty at every step of its onward path. Cradled in the heart of a
+great mountain-range, it pursued its gleaming way, here lying silent in glassy
+lakes, there rushing into tinkling little falls, foaming great falls, and
+thundering cataracts. Scores of bridges spanned its width, but no steamers
+flurried its crystal depths. Here and there a rough little rowboat, tethered
+to a willow, rocked to and fro in some quiet bend of the shore. Here the
+silver gleam of a rising perch, chub, or trout caught the eye; there a
+pickerel lay rigid in the clear water, a fish carved in stone: here eels
+coiled in the muddy bottom of some pool; and there, under the deep shadows of
+the rocks, lay fat, sleepy bass, old, and incredibly wise, quite untempted by,
+and wholly superior to, the rural fisherman's worm.
+
+The river lapped the shores of peaceful meadows; it flowed along banks green
+with maple, beech, sycamore, and birch; it fell tempestuously over dams and
+fought its way between rocky cliffs crowned with stately firs. It rolled past
+forests of pine and hemlock and spruce, now gentle, now terrible; for there is
+said to be an Indian curse upon the Saco, whereby, with every great sun, the
+child of a paleface shall be drawn into its cruel depths. Lashed into fury by
+the stony reefs that impeded its progress, the river looked now sapphire, now
+gold, now white, now leaden gray; but always it was hurrying, hurrying on its
+appointed way to the sea.
+
+After feasting his eyes and filling his heart with a morning draught of
+beauty, Stephen went in from the porch and, pausing at the stairway, called in
+stentorian tones: "Get up and eat your breakfast, Rufus! The boys will be
+picking the side jams today, and I'm going down to work on the logs. If you
+come along, bring your own pick-pole and peavey." Then, going to the kitchen
+pantry, he collected, from the various shelves, a pitcher of milk, a loaf of
+bread, half an apple pie, and a bowl of blueberries, and, with the easy
+methods of a household unswayed by feminine rule, moved toward a seat under an
+apple tree and took his morning meal in great apparent content. Having
+finished, and washed his dishes with much more thoroughness than is common to
+unsuperintended man, and having given Rufus the second call to breakfast with
+the vigor and acrimony that usually mark that unpleasant performance, he
+strode to a high point on the riverbank and, shading his eyes with his hand,
+gazed steadily downstream.
+
+Patches of green fodder and blossoming potatoes melted into soft fields that
+had been lately mown, and there were glimpses of tasseling corn rising high to
+catch the sun. Far, far down on the opposite bank of the river was the hint of
+a brown roof, and the tip of a chimney that sent a slender wisp of smoke into
+the clear air. Beyond this, and farther back from the water, the trees
+apparently hid a cluster of other chimneys, for thin spirals of smoke ascended
+here and there. The little brown roof could never have revealed itself to any
+but a lover's eye; and that discerned something even smaller, something like a
+pinkish speck, that moved hither and thither on a piece of greensward that
+sloped to the waterside.
+
+"She's up!" Stephen exclaimed under his breath, his eyes shining, his lips
+smiling. His voice had a note of hushed exaltation about it, as if "she,"
+whoever she might be, had, in condescending to rise, conferred a priceless
+boon upon a waiting universe. If she were indeed "up" (so his tone implied),
+then the day, somewhat falsely heralded by the sunrise, had really begun, and
+the human race might pursue its appointed tasks, inspired and uplifted by the
+consciousness of her existence. It might properly be grateful for the fact of
+her birth; that she had grown to woman's estate; and, above all, that, in
+common with the sun, the lark, the morning-glory, and other beautiful things
+of the early day, she was up and about her lovely, cheery, heart-warming
+business.
+
+The handful of chimneys and the smoke-spirals rising here and there among the
+trees on the river-bank belonged to what was known as the Brier Neighborhood.
+There were only a few houses in all, scattered along a side road leading from
+the river up to Liberty Center. There were no great signs of thrift or
+prosperity, but the Wiley cottage, the only one near the water, was neat and
+well cared for, and Nature had done her best to conceal man's indolence,
+poverty, or neglect.
+
+Bushes of sweetbrier grew in fragrant little forests as tall as the fences.
+Clumps of wild roses sprang up at every turn, and over all the stone walls, as
+well as on every heap of rocks by the wayside, prickly blackberry vines ran
+and clambered and clung, yielding fruit and thorns impartially to the
+neighborhood children.
+
+The pinkish speck that Stephen Waterman had spied from his side of the river
+was Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood on the Edgewood side. As there was
+another of her name on Brigadier Hill, the Edgewood minister called one of
+them the climbing Rose and the other the brier Rose, or sometimes Rose of the
+river. She was well named, the pinkish speck. She had not only some of the
+sweetest attributes of the wild rose, but the parallel might have been
+extended as far as the thorns, for she had wounded her scores,--hearts, be it
+understood, not hands. The wounding was, on the whole, very innocently done;
+and if fault could be imputed anywhere, it might rightly have been laid at the
+door of the kind powers who had made her what she was, since the smile that
+blesses a single heart is always destined to break many more.
+
+She had not a single silk gown, but she had what is far better, a figure to
+show off a cotton one. Not a brooch nor a pair of earrings was numbered among
+her possessions, but any ordinary gems would have looked rather dull and
+trivial when compelled to undergo comparison with her bright eyes. As to her
+hair, the local milliner declared it impossible for Rose Wiley to get an
+unbecoming hat; that on one occasion, being in a frolicsome mood, Rose had
+tried on all the headgear in the village emporium,--children's gingham
+"Shakers," mourning bonnets for aged dames, men's haying hats and visored
+caps,--and she proved superior to every test, looking as pretty as a pink in
+the best ones and simply ravishing in the worst. In fact, she had been so
+fashioned and finished by Nature that, had she been set on a revolving
+pedestal in a show-window, the bystanders would have exclaimed, as each new
+charm came into view: "Look at her waist! See her shoulders! And her neck and
+chin! And her hair!" While the children, gazing with raptured admiration,
+would have shrieked, in unison, "I choose her for mine."
+
+All this is as much as to say that Rose of the river was a beauty, yet it
+quite fails to explain, nevertheless, the secret of her power. When she looked
+her worst the spell was as potent as when she looked her best. Hidden away
+somewhere was a vital spark which warmed every one who came in contact with
+it. Her lovely little person was a trifle below medium height, and it might as
+well be confessed that her soul, on the morning when Stephen Waterman saw her
+hanging out the clothes on the river-bank, was not large enough to be at all
+out of proportion; but when eyes and dimples, lips and cheeks, enslave the
+onlooker, the soul is seldom subjected to a close or critical scrutiny.
+Besides, Rose Wiley was a nice girl, neat as wax, energetic, merry, amiable,
+economical. She was a dutiful granddaughter to two of the most irritating old
+people in the county; she never patronized her pug-nosed, pasty-faced girl
+friends; she made wonderful pies and doughnuts; and besides, small souls, if
+they are of the right sort, sometimes have a way of growing, to the
+discomfiture of cynics and the gratification of the angels.
+
+So, on one bank of the river grew the brier rose, a fragile thing, swaying on
+a slender stalk and looking at its pretty reflection in the water; and on the
+other a sturdy pine tree, well rooted against wind and storm. And the sturdy
+pine yearned for the wild rose; and the rose, so far as it knew, yearned for
+nothing at all, certainly not for rugged pine trees standing tall and grim in
+rocky soil. If, in its present stage of development, it gravitated toward
+anything in particular, it would have been a well-dressed white birch growing
+on an irreproachable lawn.
+
+And the river, now deep, now shallow, now smooth, now tumultuous, now
+sparkling in sunshine, now gloomy under clouds, rolled on to the engulfing
+sea. It could not stop to concern itself with the petty comedies and tragedies
+that were being enacted along its shores, else it would never have reached its
+destination. Only last night, under a full moon, there had been pairs of
+lovers leaning over the rails of all the bridges along its course; but that
+was a common sight, like that of the ardent couples sitting on its shady banks
+these summer days, looking only into each other's eyes, but exclaiming about
+the beauty of the water. Lovers would come and go, sometimes reappearing with
+successive installments of loves in a way wholly mysterious to the river.
+Meantime it had its own work to do and must be about it, for the side jams
+were to be broken and the boom "let out" at the Edgewood bridge.
+
+
+
+II
+
+"Old Kennebec"
+
+
+It was just seven o'clock that same morning when Rose Wiley smoothed the last
+wrinkle from her dimity counterpane, picked up a shred of corn-husk from the
+spotless floor under the bed, slapped a mosquito on the window-sill, removed
+all signs of murder with a moist towel, and before running down to breakfast
+cast a frowning look at her pincushion. Almira, otherwise "Mite," Shapley had
+been in her room the afternoon before and disturbed with her careless hand the
+pattern of Rose's pins. They were kept religiously in the form of a Maltese
+cross; and if, while she was extricating one from her clothing, there had been
+an alarm of fire, Rose would have stuck the pin in its appointed place in the
+design, at the risk of losing her life.
+
+Entering the kitchen with her light step, she brought the morning sunshine
+with her. The old people had already engaged in differences of opinion, but
+they commonly suspended open warfare in her presence. There were the usual
+last things to be done for breakfast, offices that belonged to her as her
+grandmother's assistant. She took yesterday's soda biscuits out of the steamer
+where they were warming and softening; brought an apple pie and a plate of
+seed cakes from the pantry; settled the coffee with a piece of dried fish skin
+and an egg shell; and transferred some fried potatoes from the spider to a
+covered dish.
+
+"Did you remember the meat, grandpa? We're all out," she said, as she began
+buttoning a stiff collar around his reluctant neck.
+
+"Remember? Land, yes! I wish't I ever could forgit anything! The butcher says
+he's 'bout tired o' travelin' over the country lookin' for critters to kill,
+but if he finds anything he'll be up along in the course of a week. He ain't a
+real smart butcher, Cyse Higgins ain't.--Land, Rose, don't button that dickey
+clean through my epperdummis! I have to sport starched collars in this life on
+account o' you and your gran'mother bein' so chock full o' style; but I hope
+to the Lord I shan't have to wear 'em in another world!"
+
+"You won't," his wife responded with the snap of a dish towel, "or if you do,
+they'll wilt with the heat."
+
+Rose smiled, but the soft hand with which she tied the neckcloth about the old
+man's withered neck pacified his spirit, and he smiled knowingly back at her
+as she took her seat at the breakfast table spread near the open kitchen door.
+She was a dazzling Rose, and, it is to be feared, a wasted one, for there was
+no one present to observe her clean pink calico and the still more subtle note
+struck in the green ribbon which was tied round her throat,--the ribbon that
+formed a sort of calyx, out of which sprang the flower of her face, as fresh
+and radiant as if it had bloomed that morning.
+
+"Give me my coffee turrible quick," said Mr. Wiley; "I must be down to the
+bridge 'fore they start dog-warpin' the side jam."
+
+"I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days," remarked his
+spouse, testily.
+
+"'T ain't me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood," replied the old man. "The
+boys'll hev a turrible job this year. The logs air ricked up jest like Rose's
+jack-straws; I never see 'em so turrible ricked up in all my exper'ence; an'
+Lije Dennett don' know no more 'bout pickin' a jam than Cooper's cow. Turrible
+sot in his ways, too; can't take a mite of advice. I was tellin' him how to go
+to work on that bung that's formed between the gre't gray rock an' the shore,
+--the awfullest place to bung that there is between this an' Biddeford,- and
+says he: 'Look here, I've be'n boss on this river for twelve year, an' I'll be
+doggoned if I'm goin' to be taught my business by any man!' 'This ain't no
+river,' says I, 'as you'd know,' says I, 'if you'd ever lived on the
+Kennebec.' 'Pity you hed n't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land I
+hed,' says I. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so turrible spry an'
+sarcustic that I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir up strife. There's
+some folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year out, as if there wa'n't
+good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije Dennett's one of 'em, when it
+comes to river-drivin'."
+
+"There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin' their own
+business," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley, as she speared a soda
+biscuit with her fork.
+
+"Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade," responded her husband
+loftily. "If your neighbor is more ignorant than what you are,--partic'larly
+if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow,--you'd ought, as a Kennebec man an' a
+Christian, to set him on the right track, though it's always a turrible risky
+thing to do." Rose's grandfather was called, by the irreverent younger
+generation, sometimes "Turrible Wiley" and sometimes "Old Kennebec," because
+of the frequency with which these words appeared in his conversation. There
+were not wanting those of late who dubbed him Uncle Ananias, for reasons too
+obvious to mention. After a long, indolent, tolerably truthful, and useless
+life, he had, at seventy-five, lost sight of the dividing line between fact
+and fancy, and drew on his imagination to such an extent that he almost
+staggered himself when he began to indulge in reminiscence. He was a feature
+of the Edgewood "drive," being always present during the five or six days that
+it was in progress, sometimes sitting on the river-bank, sometimes leaning
+over the bridge, sometimes reclining against the butt-end of a huge log, but
+always chewing tobacco and expectorating to incredible distances as he
+criticized and damned impartially all the expedients in use at the particular
+moment.
+
+"I want to stay down by the river this afternoon," said Rose. "Ever so many of
+the girls will be there, and all my sewing is done up. If grandpa will leave
+the horse for me, I'll take the drivers' lunch to them at noon, and bring the
+dishes back in time to wash them before supper."
+
+"I suppose you can go, if the rest do," said her grandmother, "though it's an
+awful lazy way of spendin' an afternoon. When I was a girl there was no such
+dawdlin' goin' on, I can tell you. Nobody thought o' lookin' at the river in
+them days; there was n't time."
+
+"But it's such fun to watch the logs!" Rose exclaimed. "Next to dancing, the
+greatest fun in the world."
+
+"'Specially as all the young men in town will be there, watchin', too," was
+the grandmother's reply. "Eben Brooks an' Richard Bean got home yesterday with
+their doctors' diplomas in their pockets. Mrs. Brooks says Eben stood
+forty-nine in a class o' fifty-five, an' seemed consid'able proud of him; an'
+I guess it is the first time he ever stood anywheres but at the foot. I tell
+you when these fifty-five new doctors git scattered over the country there'll
+be consid'able many folks keepin' house under ground. Dick Bean's goin' to
+stop a spell with Rufe an' Steve Waterman. That'll make one more to play in
+the river."
+
+"Rufus ain't hardly got his workin' legs on yit," allowed Mr. Wiley, "but
+Steve's all right. He's a turrible smart driver, an' turrible reckless, too.
+He'll take all the chances there is, though to a man that's lived on the
+Kennebec there ain't what can rightly be called any turrible chances on the
+Saco."
+
+"He'd better be 'tendin' to his farm," objected Mrs. Wiley.
+
+"His hay is all in," Rose spoke up quickly, "and he only helps on the river
+when the farm work is n't pressing. Besides, though it's all play to him, he
+earns his two dollars and a half a day."
+
+"He don't keer about the two and a half," said her grandfather. "He jest can't
+keep away from the logs. There's some that can't. When I first moved here from
+Gard'ner, where the climate never suited me--"
+
+
+"The climate of any place where you hev regular work never did an' never will
+suit you," remarked the old man's wife; but the interruption received no
+comment: such mistaken views of his character were too frequent to make any
+impression.
+
+"As I was sayin', Rose," he continued, "when we first moved here from
+Gard'ner, we lived neighbor to the Watermans. Steve an' Rufus was little boys
+then, always playin' with a couple o' wild cousins o' theirn, consid'able
+older. Steve would scare his mother pretty nigh to death stealin' away to the
+mill to ride on the 'carriage,' 'side o' the log that was bein' sawed,
+hitchin' clean out over the river an' then jerkin' back 'most into the jaws o'
+the machinery."
+
+"He never hed any common sense to spare, even when he was a young one,"
+remarked Mrs. Wiley; "and I don't see as all the 'cademy education his father
+throwed away on him has changed him much." And with this observation she rose
+from the table and went to the sink.
+
+"Steve ain't nobody's fool," dissented the old man; "but he's kind o' daft
+about the river. When he was little he was allers buildin' dams in the brook,
+an' sailin' chips, an' runnin' on the logs; allers choppin' up stickins an'
+raftin' 'em together in the pond. I cai'late Mis' Waterman died consid'able
+afore her time, jest from fright, lookin' out the winders and seein' her boys
+slippin' between the logs an' gittin' their daily dousin'. She could n't
+understand it, an' there's a heap o' things women-folks never do an' never can
+understand,--jest because they _air_ women-folks."
+
+"One o' the things is men, I s'pose," interrupted Mrs. Wiley.
+
+"Men in general, but more partic'larly husbands," assented Old Kennebec;
+"howsomever, there's another thing they don't an' can't never take in, an'
+that's sport. Steve does river-drivin' as he would horse-racin' or tiger-
+shootin' or tight-rope dancin'; an' he always did from a boy. When he was
+about twelve to fifteen, he used to help the river-drivers spring and fall,
+reg'lar. He could n't do nothin' but shin up an' down the rocks after hammers
+an' hatchets an' ropes, but he was turrible pleased with his job.
+'Stepanfetchit,' they used to call him them days,--Stepanfetchit Waterman."
+
+"Good name for him yet," came in acid tones from the sink. "He's still
+steppin' an' fetchin', only it's Rose that's doin' the drivin' now."
+
+"I'm not driving anybody, that I know of," answered Rose, with heightened
+color, but with no loss of her habitual self-command.
+
+"Then, when he graduated from errants," went on the crafty old man, who knew
+that when breakfast ceased, churning must begin, "Steve used to get
+seventy-five cents a day helpin' clear up the river--if you can call this here
+silv'ry streamlet a river. He'd pick off a log here an' there an' send it
+afloat, an' dig out them that hed got ketched in the rocks, and tidy up the
+banks jest like spring house-cleanin'. If he'd hed any kind of a boss, an' hed
+be'n trained on the Kennebec, he'd 'a' made a turrible smart driver, Steve
+would."
+
+"He'll be drownded, that's what'll become o' him, prophesied Mrs. Wiley;
+"specially if Rose encourages him in such silly foolishness as ridin' logs
+from his house down to ourn, dark nights."
+
+"Seein' as how Steve built ye a nice pigpen last month, 'pears to me you might
+have a good word for him now an' then, mother," remarked Old Kennebec,
+reaching for his second piece of pie.
+
+"I wa'n't a mite deceived by that pigpen, no more'n I was by Jed Towle's
+hencoop, nor Ivory Dunn's well-curb, nor Pitt Packard's shed-steps. If you hed
+ever kep' up your buildin's yourself, Rose's beaux would n't hev to do their
+courtin' with carpenters' tools."
+
+"It's the pigpen an' the hencoop you want to keep your eye on, mother, not the
+motives of them as made 'em. It's turrible onsettlin' to inspeck folks'
+motives too turrible close."
+
+"Riding a log is no more to Steve than riding a horse, so he says," interposed
+Rose, to change the subject; "but I tell him that a horse does n't revolve
+under you, and go sideways at the same time that it is going forwards."
+
+"Log-ridin' ain't no trick at all to a man of sperit," said Mr. Wiley.
+"There's a few places in the Kennebec where the water's too shaller to let the
+logs float, so we used to build a flume, an' the logs would whiz down like
+arrers shot from a bow. The boys used to collect by the side o' that there
+flume to see me ride a log down, an' I've watched 'em drop in a dead faint
+when I spun by the crowd; but land! you can't drownd some folks, not without
+you tie nail-kags to their head an' feet an' drop 'em in the falls; I've rid
+logs down the b'ilin'est rapids o' the Kennebec an' never lost my head. I
+remember well the year o' the gre't freshet, I rid a log from--"
+
+"There, there, father, that'll do," said Mrs. Wiley, decisively. "I'll put the
+cream in the churn, an' you jest work off' some o' your steam by bringin' the
+butter for us afore you start for the bridge. It don't do no good to brag
+afore your own women-folks; work goes consid'able better'n stories at every
+place 'cept the loafers' bench at the tavern."
+
+And the baffled raconteur, who had never done a piece of work cheerfully in
+his life, dragged himself reluctantly to the shed, where, before long, one
+could hear him moving the dasher up and down sedately to his favorite
+"churning tune" of 
+
+  Broad is the road that leads to death,
+    And thousands walk together there;
+  But Wisdom shows a narrow path,
+    With here and there a traveler.
+
+
+
+III
+
+The Edgewood "Drive"
+
+
+Just where the bridge knits together the two little villages of Pleasant River
+and Edgewood, the glassy mirror of the Saco broadens suddenly, sweeping over
+the dam in a luminous torrent. Gushes of pure amber mark the middle of the
+dam, with crystal and silver at the sides, and from the seething vortex
+beneath the golden cascade the white spray dashes up in fountains. In the
+crevices and hollows of the rocks the mad water churns itself into snowy
+froth, while the foam-flecked torrent, deep, strong, and troubled to its
+heart, sweeps majestically under the bridge, then dashes between wooded shores
+piled high with steep masses of rock, or torn and riven by great gorges.
+
+There had been much rain during the summer, and the Saco was very high, so on
+the third day of the Edgewood drive there was considerable excitement at the
+bridge, and a goodly audience of villagers from both sides of the river. There
+were some who never came, some who had no fancy for the sight, some to whom it
+was an old story, some who were too busy, but there were many to whom it was
+the event of events, a never-ending source of interest.
+
+Above the fall, covering the placid surface of the river, thousands of logs
+lay quietly "in boom" until the "turning out" process, on the last day of the
+drive, should release them and give them their chance of display, their brief
+moment of notoriety, their opportunity of interesting, amusing, exciting, and
+exasperating the onlookers by their antics.
+
+Heaps of logs had been cast up on the rocks below the dam, where they lay in
+hopeless confusion, adding nothing, however, to the problem of the moment, for
+they too bided their time. If they had possessed wisdom, discretion, and
+caution, they might have slipped gracefully over the falls and, steering clear
+of the hidden ledges (about which it would seem they must have heard whispers
+from the old pine trees along the river), have kept a straight course and
+reached their destination without costing the Edgewood Lumber Company a small
+fortune. Or, if they had inclined toward a jolly and adventurous career, they
+could have joined one of the various jams or "bungs," stimulated by the
+thought that any one of them might be a key-log, holding for a time the entire
+mass in its despotic power. But they had been stranded early in the game, and,
+after lying high and dry for weeks, would be picked off one by one and sent
+downstream.
+
+In the tumultuous boil, the foaming hubbub and flurry at the foot of the
+falls, one enormous peeled log wallowed up and clown like a huge rhinoceros,
+greatly pleasing the children by its clumsy cavortings. Some conflict of
+opposing forces kept it ever in motion, yet never set it free. Below the
+bridge were always the real battle-grounds, the scenes of the first and the
+fiercest conflicts. A ragged ledge of rock, standing well above the yeasty
+torrent, marked the middle of the river. Stephen had been stranded there once,
+just at dusk, on a stormy afternoon in spring. A jam had broken under the men,
+and Stephen, having taken too great risks, had been caught on the moving mass,
+and, leaping from log to log, his only chance for life had been to find a
+footing on Gray Rock, which was nearer than the shore.
+
+Rufus was ill at the time, and Mrs. Waterman so anxious and nervous that
+processions of boys had to be sent up to the River Farm, giving the frightened
+mother the latest bulletins of her son's welfare. Luckily, the river was
+narrow just at the Gray Rock, and it was a quite possible task, though no easy
+one, to lash two ladders together and make a narrow bridge on which the
+drenched and shivering man could reach the shore. There were loud cheers when
+Stephen ran lightly across the slender pathway that led to safety--ran so fast
+that the ladders had scarce time to bend beneath his weight. He had certainly
+"taken chances," but when did he not do that? The logger's life is one of
+"moving accidents by flood and field," and Stephen welcomed with wild
+exhilaration every hazard that came in his path. To him there was never a dull
+hour from the moment that the first notch was cut in the tree (for he
+sometimes joined the boys in the lumber camp just for a frolic) till the later
+one when the hewn log reached its final destination. He knew nothing of
+"tooling" a four-in-hand through narrow lanes or crowded thoroughfares,
+--nothing of guiding a horse over the hedges and through the pitfalls of a
+stiff bit of hunting country; his steed was the rearing, plunging, kicking
+log, and he rode it like a river god.
+
+The crowd loves daring, and so it welcomed Stephen with bravos, but it knew,
+as he knew, that he was only doing his duty by the Company, only showing the
+Saco that man was master, only keeping the old Waterman name in good repute.
+"Ye can't drownd some folks," Old Kennebec had said, as he stood in a group on
+the shore; "not without you tie sand-bags to 'em an' drop 'em in the Great
+Eddy. I'm the same kind; I remember when I was stranded on jest sech a rock in
+the Kennebec, only they left me there all night for dead, an' I had to swim
+the rapids when it come daylight."
+
+"We're well acquainted with that rock and them rapids," exclaimed one of the
+river-drivers, to the delight of the company.
+
+Rose had reason to remember Stephen's adventure, for he had clambered up the
+bank, smiling and blushing under the hurrahs of the boys, and, coming to the
+wagon where she sat waiting for her grandfather, had seized a moment to
+whisper: "Did you care whether I came across safe, Rose? Say you did!"
+
+Stephen recalled that question, too, on this August morning; perhaps because
+this was to be a red-letter day, and some time, when he had a free moment,--
+some time before supper, when he and Rose were sitting apart from the others,
+watching the logs,--he intended again to ask her to marry him. This thought
+trembled in him, stirring the deeps of his heart like a great wave, almost
+sweeping him off his feet when he held it too close and let it have full sway.
+It would be the fourth time that he had asked Rose this question of all
+questions, but there was no úperceptible difference in his excitement, for
+there was always the possible chance that she might change her mind and say
+yes, if only for variety. Wanting a thing continuously, unchangingly,
+unceasingly, year after year, he thought,--longing to reach it as the river
+longed to reach the sea,--such wanting might, in course of time, mean having.
+
+Rose drove up to the bridge with the men's luncheon, and the under boss came
+up to take the baskets and boxes from the back of the wagon.
+
+"We've had a reg'lar tussle this mornin', Rose," he said. "The logs are
+determined not to move. Ike Billings, that's the han'somest and fluentest
+all-round swearer on the Saco, has tried his best on the side jam. He's all
+out o' cuss-words and there hain't a log budged. Now, stid o' dog-warpin' this
+afternoon, an' lettin' the oxen haul off all them stubborn logs by main force,
+we're goin' to ask you to set up on the bank and smile at the jam. 'Land! she
+can do it!' says Ike a minute ago. 'When Rose starts smilin',' he says, 'there
+ain't a jam nor a bung in _me_ that don't melt like wax and jest float right
+off same as the logs do when they get into quiet, sunny water.'"
+
+Rose blushed and laughed, and drove up the hill to Mite Shapley's, where she
+put up the horse and waited till the men had eaten their luncheon. The drivers
+slept and had breakfast and supper at the Billings house, a mile down-river,
+but for several years Mrs. Wiley had furnished the noon meal, sending it down
+piping hot on the stroke of twelve. The boys always said that up or down the
+whole length of the Saco there was no such cooking as the Wileys', and much of
+this praise was earned by Rose's serving. It was the old grandmother who
+burnished the tin plates and dippers till they looked like silver;
+for--crotchety and sharp-tongued as she was--she never allowed Rose to spoil
+her hands with soft soap and sand: but it was Rose who planned and packed,
+Rose who hemmed squares of old white table-cloths and sheets to line the
+baskets and keep things daintily separate, Rose, also, whose tarts and cakes
+were the pride and admiration of church sociables and sewing societies.
+
+Where could such smoking pots of beans be found? A murmur of ecstatic approval
+ran through the crowd when the covers were removed. Pieces of sweet home-fed
+pork glistened like varnished mahogany on the top of the beans, and underneath
+were such deeps of fragrant juice as come only from slow fires and long, quiet
+hours in brick ovens. Who else could steam and bake such mealy loaves of brown
+bread, brown as plum-pudding, yet with no suspicion of sogginess? Who such
+soda biscuits, big, feathery, tasting of cream, and hardly needing butter? And
+green-apple pies! Could such candied lower crusts be found elsewhere, or more
+delectable filling? Or such rich, nutty doughnuts?--doughnuts that had spurned
+the hot fat which is the ruin of so many, and risen from its waves like
+golden-brown Venuses.
+
+"By the great seleckmen!" ejaculated Jed Towle, as he swallowed his fourth,
+"I'd like to hev a wife, two daughters, and four sisters like them Wileys, and
+jest set still on the river-bank an' hev 'em cook victuals for me. I'd hev
+nothin' to wish for then but a mouth as big as the Saco's."
+
+"And I wish this custard pie was the size o' Bonnie Eagle Pond," said Ike
+Billings. "I'd like to fall into the middle of it and eat my way out!"
+
+"Look at that bunch o' Chiny asters tied on t' the bail o' that biscuit-pail!"
+said Ivory Dunn. "That's the girl's doin's, you bet; women-folks don't seem to
+make no bo'quets after they git married. Let's divide 'em up an' wear 'em
+drivin' this afternoon; mebbe they'll ketch the eye so 't our rags won't show
+so bad. Land! it's lucky my hundred days is about up! If I don't git home
+soon, I shall be arrested for goin' without clo'es. I set up 'bout all night
+puttin' these blue patches in my pants an' tryin' to piece together a couple
+of old red-flannel shirts to make one whole one. That's the worst o' drivin'
+in these places where the pretty girls make a habit of comin' down to the
+bridge to see the fun. You hev to keep rigged up jest so stylish; you can't
+git no chance at the rum bottle, an' you even hev to go a leetle mite light on
+swearin'."
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Blasphemious Swearin'"
+
+"Steve Waterman's an awful nice feller," exclaimed Ivory Dunn just then.
+Stephen had been looking intently across the river, watching the Shapleys'
+side door, from which Rose might issue at any moment; and at this point in the
+discussion he had lounged away from the group, and, moving toward the bridge,
+began to throw pebbles idly into the water.
+
+"He's an awful smart driver for one that don't foller drivin' the year round,"
+continued Ivory; "and he's the awfullest clean-spoken, soft-spoken feller I
+ever see."
+
+"There's be'n two black sheep in his family a'ready, an' Steve kind o' feels
+as if he'd ought to be extry white," remarked Jed Towle. "You fellers that
+belonged to the old drive remember Pretty Quick Waterman well enough? Steve's
+mother brought him up."
+
+Yes; most of them remembered the Waterman twins, Stephen's cousins, now both
+dead,--Slow Waterman, so moderate in his steps and actions that you had to fix
+a landmark somewhere near him to see if he moved; and Pretty Quick, who shone
+by comparison with his twin. "I'd kind o' forgot that Pretty Quick Waterman
+was cousin to Steve," said the under boss; "he never worked with me much, but
+he wa'n't cut off the same piece o' goods as the other Watermans. Great
+hemlock! but he kep' a cussin' dictionary, Pretty Quick did! Whenever he heard
+any new words he must 'a' writ 'em down, an' then studied 'em all up in the
+winter-time, to use in the spring drive."
+
+"Swearin' 's a habit that hed ought to be practiced with turrible caution,"
+observed old Mr. Wiley, when the drivers had finished luncheon and taken out
+their pipes. "There's three kinds o' swearin',--plain swearin', profane
+swearin', an' blasphemious swearin'. Logs air jest like mules: there's times
+when a man can't seem to rip up a jam in good style 'thout a few words that's
+too strong for the infant classes in Sunday-schools; but a man hed n't ought
+to tempt Providence.When he's ridin' a log near the falls at high water, or
+cuttin' the key-log in a jam, he ain't in no place for blasphemious swearin';
+jest a little easy, perlite 'damn' is 'bout all he can resk, if he don't want
+to git drownded an' hev his ghost walkin' the river-banks till kingdom come.
+
+"You an' I, Long, was the only ones that seen Pretty Quick go, wa'n't we?"
+continued Old Kennebec, glancing at Long Abe Dennett (cousin to Short Abe),
+who lay on his back in the grass, the smoke-wreaths rising from his pipe, and
+the steel spikes in his heavy, calked-sole boots shining in the sun.
+
+"There was folks on the bridge," Long answered, "but we was the only ones near
+enough to see an' hear. It was so onexpected, an' so soon over, that them as
+was watchin' upstream, where the men was to work on the falls, would n't 'a'
+hed time to see him go down. But I did, an' nobody ain't heard me swear sence,
+though it's ten years ago. I allers said it was rum an' bravadder that killed
+Pretty Quick Waterman that day. The boys hed n't give him a 'dare' that he hed
+n't took up. He seemed like he was possessed, an' the logs was the same way;
+they was fairly wild, leapin' around in the maddest kind o' water you ever
+see. The river was b'ilin' high that spring; it was an awful stubborn jam, an'
+Pretty Quick, he'd be'n workin' on it sence dinner."
+
+"He clumb up the bank more'n once to have a pull at the bottle that was hid in
+the bushes," interpolated Mr. Wiley. "Like as not; that was his failin'. Well,
+most o' the boys were on the other side o' the river, workin' above the
+bridge, an' the boss hed called Pretty Quick to come off an' leave the jam
+till mornin', when they'd get horses an' dog-warp it off, log by log. But when
+the boss got out o' sight, Pretty Quick jest stood right still, swingin' his
+axe, an' blasphemin' so it would freeze your blood, vowin' he would n't move
+till the logs did, if he stayed there till the crack o' doom. Jest then a
+great, ponderous log, that hed be'n churnin' up an' down in the falls for a
+week, got free an' come blunderin' an' thunderin' down-river. Land! it was
+chock full o' water, an' looked 'bout as big as a church! It come straight
+along, butt-end foremost, an' struck that jam, full force, so 't every log in
+it shivered. There was a crack,- the crack o' doom, sure enough, for Pretty
+Quick,- an' one o' the logs le'p' right out an' struck him jest where he
+stood, with his axe in the air, blasphemin'. The jam kind o' melted an'
+crumbled up, an' in a second Pretty Quick was whirlin' in the white water. He
+never riz,- at least where we could see him,--an' we did n't find him for a
+week. That's the whole story, an' I guess Steve takes it as a warnin'. Anyway,
+he ain't no friend to rum nor swearin', Steve ain't. He knows Pretty Quick's
+ways shortened his mother's life, an' you notice what a sharp lookout he keeps
+on Rufus."
+
+"He needs it," Ike Billings commented tersely.
+
+"Some men seem to lose their wits when they're workin' on logs," observed Mr.
+Wiley, who had deeply resented Long Dennett's telling of a story which he knew
+fully as well and could have told much better. "Now, nat'rally, I've seen
+things on the Kennebec--"
+
+"Three cheers for the Saco! Hats off, boys!" shouted Jed Towle, and his
+directions were followed with a will.
+
+"As I was sayin'," continued the old man, peacefully, "I've seen things on the
+Kennebec that would n't happen on a small river, an' I've be'n in turrible
+places an' taken turrible resks resks that would 'a' turned a Saco River man's
+hair white; but them is the times when my wits work the quickest. I remember
+once I was smokin' my pipe when a jam broke under me. 'T was a small jam, or
+what we call a small jam on the Kennebec,--only about three hundred thousand
+pine logs. The first thing I knowed, I was shootin' back an' forth in the
+b'ilin' foam, hangin' on t' the end of a log like a spider. My hands was
+clasped round the log, and I never lost control o' my pipe. They said I smoked
+right along, jest as cool an' placid as a pond-lily."
+
+"Why 'd you quit drivin'?" inquired Ivory.
+
+"My strength wa'n't ekal to it," Mr. Wiley responded sadly. "I was all skin,
+bones, an' nerve. The Comp'ny would n't part with me altogether, so they give
+me a place in the office down on the wharves."
+
+"That wa'n't so bad," said Jed Towle; "why did n't you hang on to it, so's to
+keep in sight o' the Kennebec?"
+
+"I found I could n't be confined under cover. My liver give all out, my
+appetite failed me, an' I wa'n't wuth a day's wages. I'd learned engineerin'
+when I was a boy, an' I thought I'd try runnin' on the road a spell, but it
+did n't suit my constitution. My kidneys ain't turrible strong, an' the
+doctors said I'd have Bright's disease if I did n't git some kind o' work
+where there wa'n't no vibrations."
+
+"Hard to find, Mr. Wiley; hard to find!" said Jed Towle.
+
+"You're right," responded the old man feelingly. "I've tried all kinds o'
+labor. Some of 'em don't suit my liver, some disagrees with my stomach, and
+the rest of 'em has vibrations; so here I set, high an' dry on the banks of
+life, you might say, like a stranded log."
+
+As this well-known simile fell upon the ear, there was a general stir in the
+group, for Turrible Wiley, when rhetorical, sometimes grew tearful, and this
+was a mood not to be encouraged.
+
+"All right, boss," called Ike Billings, winking to the boys; "we'll be there
+in a jiffy!" for the luncheon hour had flown, and the work of the afternoon
+was waiting for them. "You make a chalk-mark where you left off, Mr. Wiley,
+an' we'll hear the rest tomorrer; only don't you forgit nothin'! Remember 't
+was the Kennebec you was talkin' about."
+
+"I will, indeed," responded the old man. "As I was sayin' when interrupted, I
+may be a stranded log, but I'm proud that the mark o' the Gard'ner Lumber
+Comp'ny is on me, so 't when I git to my journey's end they'll know where I
+belong and send me back to the Kennebec. Before I'm sawed up I'd like to
+forgit this triflin' brook in the sight of a good-sized river, an' rest my
+eyes on some full-grown logs, 'stead o' these little damn pipestems you boys
+are playin' with!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The Game of Jackstraws
+
+There was a roar of laughter at the old man's boast, but in a moment all was
+activity. The men ran hither and thither like ants, gathering their tools.
+There were some old-fashioned pick-poles, straight, heavy levers without any
+"dog," and there were modern pick-poles and peaveys, for every river has its
+favorite equipment in these things. There was no dynamite in those days to
+make the stubborn jams yield, and the dog-warp was in general use. Horses or
+oxen, sometimes a line of men, stood on the river-bank. A long rope was
+attached by means of a steel spike to one log after another, and it was
+dragged from the tangled mass. Sometimes, after unloading the top logs, those
+at the bottom would rise and make the task easier; sometimes the work would go
+on for hours with no perceptible progress, and Mr. Wiley would have
+opportunity to tell the bystanders of a" turrible jam" on the Kennebec that
+had cost the Lumber Company ten thousand dollars to break.
+
+There would be great arguments on shore, among the villagers as well as among
+the experts, as to the particular log which might be a key to the position.
+The boss would study the problem from various standpoints, and the drivers
+themselves would pass from heated discussion into long consultations.
+
+"They're paid by the day," Old Kennebec would philosophize to the doctor; "an'
+when they're consultin' they don't hev to be doggin', which is a turrible
+sight harder work."
+
+Rose had created a small sensation, on one occasion, by pointing out to the
+under boss the key-log in a jam. She was past mistress of the pretty game of
+jackstraws, much in vogue at that time. The delicate little lengths of
+polished wood or bone were shaken together and emptied on the table. Each
+jackstraw had one of its ends fashioned in the shape of some sort of
+implement,--a rake, hoe, spade, fork, or mallet. All the pieces were
+intertwined by the shaking process, and they lay as they fell, in a hopeless
+tangle. The task consisted in taking a tiny pick-pole, scarcely bigger than a
+match, and with the bit of curved wire on the end lifting off the jackstraws
+one by one without stirring the pile or making it tremble. When this occurred,
+you gave place to your opponent, who relinquished his turn to you when ill
+fortune descended upon him, the game, which was a kind of river-driving and
+jam-picking in miniature, being decided by the number of pieces captured and
+their value. No wonder that the under boss asked Rose's advice as to the
+key-log. She had a fairy's hand, and her cunning at deciding the pieces to be
+moved, and her skill at extricating and lifting them from the heap, were
+looked upon in Edgewood as little less than supernatural. It was a favorite
+pastime; and although a man's hand is ill adapted to it, being over-large and
+heavy, the game has obvious advantages for a lover in bringing his head very
+close to that of his beloved adversary. The jackstraws have to be watched with
+a hawk's eagerness, since the "trembling" can be discerned only by a keen eye;
+but there were moments when Stephen was willing to risk the loss of a battle
+if he could watch Rose's drooping eyelashes, the delicate down on her pink
+cheek, and the feathery curls that broke away from her hair.
+
+He was looking at her now from a distance, for she and Mite Shapley were
+assisting Jed Towle to pile up the tin plates and tie the tin dippers
+together. Next she peered into one of the bean-pots, and seemed pleased that
+there was still something in its depths; then she gathered the fragments
+neatly together in a basket, and, followed by her friend, clambered down the
+banks to a shady spot where the Boomshers, otherwise known as the Crambry
+family, were "lined up" expectantly.
+
+It is not difficult to find a single fool in any community, however small; but
+a family of fools is fortunately somewhat rarer. Every county, however, can
+boast of one fool-family, and York County is always in the fashion, with fools
+as with everything else. The unique, much-quoted, and undesirable Boomshers
+could not be claimed as indigenous to the Saco valley, for this branch was an
+offshoot of a still larger tribe inhabiting a distant township. Its beginnings
+were shrouded in mystery. There was a French-Canadian ancestor somewhere, and
+a Gypsy or Indian grandmother. They had always intermarried from time
+immemorial. When one of the selectmen of their native place had been asked why
+the Boomshers always married cousins, and why the habit was not discouraged,
+he replied that he really did n't know; he s'posed they felt it would be kind
+of odd to go right out and marry a stranger.
+
+Lest "Boomsher" seem an unusual surname, it must be explained that the actual
+name was French and could not be coped with by Edgewood or Pleasant River,
+being something (luite as impossible to spell as to pronounce. As the family
+had lived for the last few years somewhere near the Killick Cranberry Meadows,
+they were called--and completely described in the calling--the Crambry
+fool-family. A talented and much traveled gentleman who once stayed over night
+at the Edgewood tavern, proclaimed it his opinion that Boomsher had been
+gradually corrupted from Beaumarchais. When he wrote the word on his visiting
+card and showed it to Mr. Wiley, Old Kennebec had replied, that in the
+judgment of a man who had lived in large places and seen a turrible lot o'
+life, such a name could never have been given either to a Christian or a
+heathen family, that the way in which the letters was thrown together into it,
+and the way in which they was sounded when read out loud, was entirely ag'in
+reason. It was true, he said, that Beaumarchais, bein' such a fool-name, might
+'a' be'n invented a-purpose for a fool-family, but he would n't hold even with
+callin' 'em Boomsher; Crambry was well enough for 'em an' a sight easier to
+speak.
+
+Stephen knew a good deal about the Crambrys, for he passed their so-called
+habitation in going to one of his wood-lots. It was only a month before that
+he had found them all sitting outside their broken-down fence, surrounded by
+decrepit chairs, sofas, tables, bedsteads, bits of carpet, and stoves.
+
+"What's the matter?" he called out from his wagon.
+
+"There ain't nothin' the matter," said Alcestis Crambry. "Father's (lead, an'
+we're dividin' up the furnerchure."
+
+Alcestis was the pride of the Crambrys, and the list of his attainments used
+often to be on his proud father's lips. It was he who was the largest, "for
+his size," in the family; he who could tell his brothers Paul and Arcadus "by
+their looks"; he who knew a sour apple from a sweet one the minute he bit it;
+he who, at the early age of ten, was bright enough to point to the cupboard
+and say, "Puddin', dad!"
+
+Alcestis had enjoyed, in consequence of his unusual intellectual powers, some
+educational privileges, and the Killick school-mistress well remembered his
+first day at the village seat of learning. Reports of what took place in this
+classic temple from day to day may have been wafted to the dull ears of the
+boy, who was not thought ready for school until he had attained the ripe age
+of twelve. It may even have been that specific rumors of the signs, symbols,
+and hieroglyphics used in educational institutions had reached him in the
+obscurity of his cranberry meadows. At all events, when confronted by the
+alphabet chart, whose huge black capitals were intended to capture the
+wandering eyes of the infant class, Alcestis exhibited unusual, almost
+unnatural, excitement. "That is 'A,' my boy," said the teacher genially, as
+she pointed to the first character on the chart. "Good God, is that 'A'!"
+cried Alcestis, sitting down heavily on the nearest bench. And neither teacher
+nor scholars could discover whether he was agreeably surprised or disappointed
+in the letter,- whether he had expected, if he ever encountered it, to find it
+writhing in coils on the floor of a cage, or whether it simply bore no
+resemblance to the ideal already established in his mind.
+
+Mrs. Wiley had once tried to make something of Mercy, the oldest daughter of
+the family, but at the end of six weeks she announced that a girl who could
+n't tell whether the clock was going "forrards or backwards," and who rubbed a
+pocket-handkerchief as long as she did a sheet, would be no help in her
+household.
+
+The Crambrys had daily walked the five or six miles from their home to the
+Edgewood bridge during the progress of the drive, not only for the social and
+intellectual advantages to be gained from the company present, but for the
+more solid compensation of a good meal. They all adored Rose, partly because
+she gave them food, and partly because she was sparkling and pretty and wore
+pink dresses that caught their dull eyes.
+
+
+The afternoon proved a lively one. In the first place, one of the younger men
+slipped into the water between two logs, part of a lot chained together
+waiting to be let out of the boom. The weight of the mass higher up and the
+force of the current wedged him in rather tightly, and when he had been
+"pried" out he declared that he felt like an apple after it had been squeezed
+in the cider-mill, so he drove home, and Rufus Waterman took his place.
+
+Two hours' hard work followed this incident, and at the end of that time the
+"bung" that reached from the shore to Waterman's Ledge (the rock where Pretty
+Quick met his fate) was broken up, and the logs that composed it were started
+down-river. There remained now only the great side jam at Gray Rock. This had
+been allowed to grow, gathering logs as they drifted past, thus making higher
+water and a stronger current on the other side of the rock, and allowing an
+easier passage for the logs at that point.
+
+All was excitement now, for, this particular piece of work accomplished, the
+boom above the falls would be "turned out," and the river would once more be
+clear and clean at the Edgewood bridge.
+
+Small boys, perching on the rocks with their heels hanging, hands and mouths
+full of red Astrakhan apples, cheered their favorites to the echo, while the
+drivers shouted to one another and watched the signs and signals of the boss,
+who could communicate with them only in that way, so great was the roar of the
+water.
+
+The jam refused to yield to ordinary measures. It was a difficult problem, for
+the rocky river-bed held many a snare and pitfall. There was a certain ledge
+under the water, so artfully placed that every log striking under its
+projecting edges would wedge itself firmly there, attracting others by its
+evil example.
+
+"That galoot-boss ought to hev shoved his crew down to that jam this mornin',"
+grumbled Old Kennebec to Alcestis Crambry, who was always his most loyal and
+attentive listener. "But he would n't take no advice, not if Pharaoh nor Boaz
+nor Herod nor Nicodemus come right out o' the Bible an' give it to him. The
+logs air contrary today. Sometimes they'll go along as easy as an old shoe,
+an' other times they'll do nothin' but bung, bung, bung! There's a log
+nestlin' down in the middle o' that jam that I've be'n watchin' for a week.
+It's a cur'ous one, to begin with; an' then it has a mark on it that you can
+reco'nize it by. Did ye ever hear tell o' George the Third, King of England,
+Alcestis, or ain't he known over to the crambry medders? Well, once upon a
+time men used to go through the forests over here an' slash a mark on the
+trunks o' the biggest trees. That was the royal sign, as you might say, an'
+meant that the tree was to be taken over to England to make masts an'
+yard-arms for the King's ships. What made me think of it now is that the
+King's mark was an arrer, an' it's an arrer that's on that there log I'm
+showin' ye. Well, sir, I seen it fust at Milliken's Mills a Monday. It was in
+trouble then, an' it's be'n in trouble ever sence. That's allers the way;
+there'll be one pesky, crooked, contrary, consarne'd log that can't go
+anywheres without gittin' into difficulties. You can yank it out an' set it
+afloat, an' before you hardly git your doggin' iron off of it, it'll be
+snarled up agin in some new place. From the time it's chopped down to the day
+it gets to Saco, it costs the Comp'ny 'bout ten times its pesky valler as
+lumber. Now they've sent over to Benson's for a team of horses, an' I bate ye
+they can't git 'em. I wish i was the boss on this river, Alcestis."
+
+"I wish I was," echoed the boy.
+
+"Well, your head-fillin' ain't the right kind for a boss, Alcestis, an' you'd
+better stick to dry land. You set right down here while I go back a piece an'
+git the pipe out o' my coat pocket. I guess nothin' ain't goin' to happen for
+a few minutes."
+
+The surmise about the horses, unlike most of Old Kennebec's, proved to be
+true. Benson's pair had gone to Portland with a load of hay; accordingly the
+tackle was brought, the rope was adjusted to a log, and five of the drivers,
+standing on the river-bank, attempted to drag it from its intrenched position.
+It refused to yield the fraction of an inch. Rufus and Stephen joined the five
+men, and the augmented crew of seven were putting all their strength on the
+rope when a cry went up from the watchers on the bridge. The "dog" had
+loosened suddenly, and the men were flung violently to the ground. For a
+second they were stunned both by the surprise and by the shock of the blow,
+but in the same moment the cry of the crowd swelled louder. Alcestis Crambry
+had stolen, all unnoticed, to the rope, and had attempted to use his feeble
+powers for the common good. When the blow came he fell backward, and, making
+no effort to control the situation, slid over the bank and into the water.
+
+The other Crambrys, not realizing the danger, laughed audibly, but there was
+no jeering from the bridge.
+
+Stephen had seen Alcestis slip, and in the fraction of a moment had taken off
+his boots and was coasting down the slippery rocks behind him; in a twinkling
+he was in the water, almost as soon as the boy himself.
+
+"Doggoned idjut!" exclaimed Old Kennebec, tearfully. "Wuth the hull
+fool-family! If I hed n't 'a' be'n so old, I'd 'a' jumped in myself, for you
+can't drownd a Wiley, not without you tie nail-kags to their head an' feet an'
+drop 'em in the falls."
+
+Alcestis, who had neither brains, courage, nor experience, had, better still,
+the luck that follows the witless. He was carried swiftly down the current;
+but, only fifty feet away, a long, slender log, wedged between two low rocks
+on the shore, jutted out over the water, almost touching its surface. The
+boy's clothes were admirably adapted to the situation, being full of enormous
+rents. In some way the end of the log caught in the rags of Alcestis's coat
+and held him just seconds enough to enable Stephen to swim to him, to seize
+him by the nape of the neck, to lift him on the log, and thence to the shore.
+It was a particularly bad place for a landing, and there was nothing to do but
+to lower ropes and drag the drenched men to the high ground above.
+
+Alcestis came to his senses in ten or fifteen minutes, and seemed as bright as
+usual, with a kind of added swagger at being the central figure in a dramatic
+situation.
+
+"I wonder you hed n't stove your brains out, when you landed so turrible
+suddent on that rock at the foot of the bank," said Mr. Wiley to him.
+
+"I should, but I took good care to light on my head," responded Alcestis; a
+cryptic remark which so puzzled Old Kennebec that he mused over it for some
+hours.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Hearts And Other Hearts
+
+Stephen had brought a change of clothes, as he had a habit of being ducked
+once at least during the day; and since there was a halt in the proceedings
+and no need of his services for an hour or two, he found Rose and walked with
+her to a secluded spot where they could watch the logs and not be seen by the
+people.
+
+"You frightened everybody almost to death, jumping into the river," chided
+Rose.
+
+Stephen laughed. "They thought I was a fool to save a fool, I suppose."
+
+"Perhaps not as bad as that, but it did seem reckless."
+
+"I know; and the boy, no doubt, would be better off dead; but so should I be,
+if I could have let him die."
+
+Rose regarded this strange point of view for a moment, and then silently
+acquiesced in it. She was constantly doing this, and she often felt that her
+mental horizon broadened in the act; but she could not be sure that Stephen
+grew any dearer to her because of his moral altitudes.
+
+"Besides," Stephen argued, "I happened to be nearest to the river, and it was
+my job."
+
+"How do you always happen to be nearest to the people in trouble, and why is
+it always your 'job'?"
+
+"If there are any rewards for good conduct being distributed, I'm right in
+line with my hand stretched out," Stephen replied, with meaning in his voice.
+
+Rose blushed under her flowery hat as he led the way to a bench under a
+sycamore tree that overhung the water.
+
+She had almost convinced herself that she was as much in love with Stephen
+Waterman as it was in her nature to be with anybody. He was handsome in his
+big way, kind, generous, temperate, well educated, and well-to-do. No fault
+could be found with his family, for his mother had been a teacher, and his
+father, though a farmer, a college graduate. Stephen himself had had one year
+at Bowdoin, but had been recalled, as the head of the house, when his father
+died. That was a severe blow; but his mother's death, three years after, was a
+grief never to be quite forgotten. Rose, too, was the child of a gently bred
+mother, and all her instincts were refined. Yes; Stephen in himself satisfied
+her in all the larger wants of her nature, but she had an unsatisfied hunger
+for the world,--the world of Portland, where her cousins lived; or, better
+still, the world of Boston, of which she heard through Mrs. Wealthy Brooks,
+whose nephew Claude often came to visit her in Edgewood. Life on a farm a mile
+and a half distant from post-office and stores; life in the house with Rufus,
+who was rumored to be somewhat wild and unsteady,--this prospect seemed a
+trifle dull and uneventful to the trivial part of her, though to the better
+part it was enough. The better part of her loved Stephen Waterman, dimly
+feeling the richness of his nature, the tenderness of his affection, the
+strength of his character. Rose was not destitute either of imagination or
+sentiment. She did not relish this constant weighing of Stephen in the
+balance: he was too good to be weighed and considered. She longed to be
+carried out of herself on a wave of rapturous assent, but something seemed to
+hold her back,--some seed of discontent with the man's environment and
+circumstances, some germ of longing for a gayer, brighter, more varied life.
+No amount of self-searching or argument could change the situation. She always
+loved Stephen more or less: more when he was away from her, because she never
+approved his collars nor the set of his shirt bosom; and as he naturally wore
+these despised articles of apparel whenever he proposed to her, she was always
+lukewarm about marrying him and settling down on the River Farm. Still, today
+she discovered in herself, with positive gratitude, a warmer feeling for him
+than she had experienced before. He wore a new and becoming gray flannel
+shirt, with the soft turn-over collar that belonged to it, and a blue tie, the
+color of his kind eyes. She knew that he had shaved his beard at her request
+not long ago, and that when she did not like the effect as much as she had
+hoped, he had meekly grown a mustache for her sake; it did seem as if a man
+could hardly do more to please an exacting ladylove.
+
+And she had admired him unreservedly when he pulled off his boots and jumped
+into the river to save Alcestis Crambry's life, without giving a single
+thought to his own.
+
+And was there ever, after all, such a noble, devoted, unselfish fellow, or a
+better brother? And would she not despise herself for rejecting him simply
+because he was countrified, and because she longed to see the world of the
+fashion plates in the magazines?
+
+"The logs are so like people!" she exclaimed as they sat down. "I could name
+nearly every one of them for somebody in the village. Look at Mite Shapley,
+that dancing little one, slipping over the falls and skimming along the top of
+the water, keeping out of all the deep places, and never once touching the
+rocks."
+
+Stephen fell into her mood. "There's Squire Anderson coming down crosswise and
+bumping everything in reach. You know he's always buying lumber and logs
+without knowing what he is going to do with them. They just lie and rot by the
+roadside. The boys always say that a toadstool is the old Squire's 'mark' on a
+log."
+
+"And that stout, clumsy one is Short Dennett.--What are you doing, Stephen?"
+
+"Only building a fence round this clump of harebells," Stephen replied.
+"They've just got well rooted, and if the boys come skidding down the bank
+with their spiked shoes, the poor things will never hold up their heads again.
+Now they're safe.--Oh, look, Rose! There come the minister and his wife!"
+
+A portly couple of peeled logs, exactly matched in size, came ponderously over
+the falls together, rose within a second of each other, joined again, and
+swept under the bridge side by side.
+
+"And--oh! oh!--Dr. and Mrs. Cram just after them! Isn't that funny?" laughed
+Rose, as a very long, slender pair of pines swam down, as close to each other
+as if they had been glued in that position. Rose thought, as she watched them,
+who but Stephen would have cared what became of the clump of delicate
+harebells. How gentle such a man would be to a woman! How tender his touch
+would be if she were ill or in trouble!
+
+Several single logs followed,--crooked ones, stolid ones, adventurous ones,
+feeble swimmers, deep divers. Some of them tried to start a small jam on their
+own account; others stranded themselves for good and all, as Rose and Stephen
+sat there side by side, with little Dan Cupid for an invisible third on the
+bench.
+
+"There never was anything so like people," Rose repeated, leaning forward
+excitedly. "And, upon my word, the minister and doctor couples are still
+together. I wonder if they'll get as far as the fails at Union? That would be
+an odd place to part, would n't it--Union?"
+
+Stephen saw his opportunity, and seized it.
+
+"There's a reason, Rose, why two logs go downstream better than one, and get
+into less trouble. They make a wider path, create more force and a better
+current. It's the same way with men and women. Oh, Rose, there is n't a man in
+the world that's loved you as long, or knows how to love you any better than I
+do. You're just like a white birch sapling, and I'm a great, clumsy fir tree;
+but if you 'll only trust yourself to me, Rose, I'll take you safely down-
+river."
+
+Stephen's big hand closed on Rose's little one; she returned its pressure
+softly and gave him the kiss that with her, as with him, meant a promise for
+all the years to come. The truth and passion in the man had broken the girl's
+bonds for the moment. Her vision was clearer, and, realizing the treasures of
+love and fidelity that were being offered her, she accepted them, half
+unconscious that she was not returning them in kind. How is the belle of two
+villages to learn that she should "thank Heaven, fasting, for a good man's
+love"?
+
+And Stephen? He went home in the dusk, not knowing whether his feet were
+touching the solid earth or whether he was treading upon rainbows.
+
+Rose's pink calico seemed to brush him as he walked in the path that was wide
+enough only for one. His solitude was peopled again when he fed the cattle,
+for Rose's face smiled at him from the haymow; and when he strained the milk,
+Rose held the pans.
+
+His nightly tasks over, he went out and took his favorite seat under the apple
+tree. All was still, save for the crickets' ceaseless chirp, the soft thud of
+an August sweeting dropping in the grass, and the swish-swash of the water
+against his boat, tethered in the Willow Cove.
+
+He remembered when he first saw Rose, for that must have been when he began to
+love her, though he was only fourteen and quite unconscious that the first
+seed had been dropped in the rich soil of his boyish heart.
+
+He was seated on the kerosene barrel in the Edgewood post-office, which was
+also the general country store, where newspapers, letters, molasses, nails,
+salt codfish, hairpins, sugar, liver pills, canned goods, beans, and ginghams
+dwelt in genial proximity. When she entered, just a little pink-and-white slip
+of a thing with a tin pail in her hand and a sunbonnet falling off her wavy
+hair, Stephen suddenly stopped swinging his feet. She gravely announced her
+wants, reading them from a bit of paper,--1 quart molasses, 1 package ginger,
+1 lb. cheese, 2 pairs shoe laces, 1 card shirt buttons.
+
+While the storekeeper drew off the molasses she exchanged shy looks with
+Stephen, who, clean, well-dressed, and carefully mothered as he was, felt all
+at once uncouth and awkward, rather as if he were some clumsy lout pitch-
+forked into the presence of a fairy queen. He offered her the little bunch of
+bachelor's buttons he held in his hand, augury of the future, had he known
+it,--and she accepted them with a smile. She dropped her memorandum; he picked
+it up, and she smiled again, doing still more fatal damage than in the first
+instance. No words were spoken, but Rose, even at ten, had less need of them
+than most of her sex, for her dimples, aided by dancing eyes, length of
+lashes, and curve of lips, quite took the place of conversation. The dimples
+tempted, assented, denied, corroborated, deplored, protested, sympathized,
+while the intoxicated beholder cudgeled his brain for words or deeds which
+should provoke and evoke more and more dimples.
+
+The storekeeper hung the molasses pail over Rose's right arm and tucked the
+packages under her left, and as he opened the mosquito-netting door to let her
+pass out she looked back at Stephen, perched on the kerosene barrel, just a
+little girl, a little glance, a little dimple, and Stephen was never quite the
+same again. The years went on, and the boy became man, yet no other image had
+ever troubled the deep, placid waters of his heart. Now, after many denials,
+the hopes and longings of his nature had been answered, and Rose had promised
+to marry him. He would sacrifice his passion for logging and driving in the
+future, and become a staid farmer and man of affairs, only giving himself a
+river holiday now and then. How still and peaceful it was under the trees, and
+how glad his mother would be to think that the old farm would wake from its
+sleep, and a woman's light foot be heard in the sunny kitchen!
+
+Heaven was full of silent stars, and there was a moonglade on the water that
+stretched almost from him to Rose. His heart embarked on that golden pathway
+and sailed on it to the farther shore. The river was free of logs, and under
+the light of the moon it shone like a silver mirror. The soft wind among the
+fir branches breathed Rose's name; the river, rippling against the shore, sang
+"Rose "; and as Stephen sat there dreaming of the future, his dreams, too,
+could have been voiced in one word, and that word "Rose."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+The Little House
+
+
+
+The autumn days flew past like shuttles in a loom. The river reflected the
+yellow foliage of the white birch and the scarlet of the maples. The wayside
+was bright with goldenrod, with the red tassels of the sumac, with the purple
+frost-flower and feathery clematis.
+
+If Rose was not as happy as Stephen, she was quietly content, and felt that
+she had more to be grateful for than most girls, for Stephen surprised her
+with first one evidence and then another of thoughtful generosity. In his
+heart of hearts he felt that Rose was not wholly his, that she reserved,
+withheld something; and it was the subjugation of this rebellious province
+that he sought. He and Rose had agreed to wait a year for their marriage, in
+which time Rose's cousin would finish school and be ready to live with the old
+people; meanwhile Stephen had learned that his maiden aunt would be glad to
+come and keep house for Rufus. The work at the River Farm was too hard for a
+girl, so he had persuaded himself of late, and the house was so far from the
+village that Rose was sure to be lonely. He owned a couple of acres between
+his place and the Edgewood bridge, and here, one afternoon only a month after
+their engagement, he took Rose to see the foundations of a little house he was
+building for her. It was to be only a story-and-a-half cottage of six small
+rooms, the two upper chambers to be finished off later on. Stephen had placed
+it well back from the road, leaving space in front for what was to be a most
+wonderful arrangement of flower-beds, yet keeping a strip at the back, on the
+river-brink, for a small vegetable garden. There had been a house there years
+before-so many years that the blackened ruins were entirely overgrown; but a
+few elms and an old apple-orchard remained to shade the new dwelling and give
+welcome to the coming inmates.
+
+Stephen had fifteen hundred dollars in bank, he could turn his hand to almost
+anything, and his love was so deep that Rose's plumb-line had never sounded
+bottom; accordingly he was able, with the help of two steady workers, to have
+the roof on before the first of November. The weather was clear and fine, and
+by Thanksgiving clapboards, shingles, two coats of brown paint, and even the
+blinds had all been added. This exhibition of reckless energy on Stephen's
+part did not wholly commend itself to the neighborhood.
+
+"Steve's too turrible spry," said Rose's grandfather; "he'll trip himself up
+some o' these times."
+
+"_You_ never will," remarked his better half, sagely.
+
+"The resks in life come along fast enough, without runnin' to meet 'em,"
+continued the old man. "There's good dough in Rose, but it ain't more'n half
+riz. Let somebody come along an' drop in a little more yeast, or set the dish
+a little mite nearer the stove, an' you'll see what 'll happen."
+
+"Steve's kept house for himself some time, an' I guess he knows more about
+bread-makin' than you do."
+
+"There don't nobody know more'n I do about nothin', when my pipe's drawin'
+real good an' nobody's thornin' me to go to work," replied Mr. Wiley; "but
+nobody's willin' to take the advice of a man that's seen the world an' lived
+in large places, an' the risin' generation is in a turrible hurry. I don' know
+how 't is: young folks air allers settin' the clock forrard an' the old ones
+puttin' it back."
+
+"Did you ketch anything for dinner when you was out this mornin'?" asked his
+wife.
+
+"No, I fished an' fished, till I was about ready to drop, an' I did git a few
+shiners, but land, they wa'n't as big as the worms I was ketchin' 'em with, so
+i pitched 'em back in the water an' quit."
+
+During the progress of these remarks Mr. Wiley opened the door under the sink,
+and from beneath a huge iron pot drew a round tray loaded with a glass pitcher
+and half a dozen tumblers, which he placed carefully on the kitchen table.
+"This is the last day's option I've got on this lemonade-set," he said, "an'
+if I'm goin' to Biddeford tomorrer I've got to make up my mind here an' now."
+
+With this observation he took off his shoes, climbed in his stocking feet to
+the vantage ground of a kitchen chair, and lifted a stone china pitcher from a
+corner of the highest cup-board shelf where it had been hidden. "This
+lemonade's gittin' kind o' dusty," he complained. "I cal'lated to hev a kind
+of a spree on it when I got through choosin' Rose's weddin' present, but I
+guess the pig 'll hev to help me out." The old man filled one of the glasses
+from the pitcher, pulled up the kitchen shades to the top, put both hands in
+his pockets, and walked solemnly round the table, gazing at his offering from
+every possible point of view. There had been three lemonade-sets in the window
+of a Biddeford crockery store when Mr. Wiley chanced to pass by, and he had
+brought home the blue and green one on approval. To th': casual cyc it would
+have appeared as quite uniquely hideous until the red and yellow or the purple
+and orange ones had been seen; after that, no human being could have made a
+decision, where each was so unparalleled in its ugliness, and Old Kennebec's
+confusion of mind would have been perfectly understood by the connoisseur.
+
+"How do you like it with the lemonade in, mother?" he inquired eagerly. "The
+thing that plagues me most is that the red an' yaller one I hed home last week
+lights up better'n this, an' I believe I'll settle on that; for as I was
+thinkin' last night in bed, lemonade is mostly an evenin' drink an' Rose won't
+be usin' the set much by daylight. Root beer looks the han'somest in this
+purple set, but Rose loves lemonade better'n beer, so I guess I'll pack up
+this one an' change it tomorrer. Mebbe when I get it out o' sight an' give the
+lemonade to the pig I'll be easier in my mind."
+
+In the opinion of the community at large Stephen's forehandedness in the
+matter of preparations for his marriage was imprudence, and his desire for
+neatness and beauty flagrant extravagance. The house itself was a foolish
+idea, it was thought, but there were extenuating circumstances, for the maiden
+aunt really needed a home, and Rufus was likely to marry before long and take
+his wife to the River Farm. It was to be hoped in his case that he would avoid
+the snares of beauty and choose a good stout girl who would bring the dairy
+back to what it was in Mrs. Waterman's time.
+
+All winter long Stephen labored on the inside of the cottage, mostly by
+himself. He learned all trades in succession, Love being his only master. He
+had many odd days to spare from his farm work, and if he had not found days he
+would have taken nights. Scarcely a nail was driven without Rose's advice; and
+when the plastering was hard and dry, the wallpapers were the result of weeks
+of consultation.
+
+Among the quiet joys of life there is probably no other so deep, so sweet, so
+full of trembling hope and delight, as the building and making of a home,--a
+home where two lives are to be merged in one and flow on together, a home full
+of mysterious and delicious possibilities, hidden in a future which is always
+rose-colored.
+
+Rose's sweet little nature broadened under Stephen's influence; but she had
+her moments of discontent and unrest, always followed quickly by remorse.
+
+At the Thanksgiving sociable some one had observed her turquoise engagement
+ring,--some one who said that such a hand was worthy of a diamond, that
+turquoises were a pretty color, but that there was only one stone for an
+engagement ring, and that was a diamond. At the Christmas dance the same some
+one had said that her waltzing would make her "all the rage" in Boston. She
+wondered if it were true, and wondered whether, if she had not promised to
+marry Stephen, some splendid being from a city would have descended from his
+heights, bearing diamonds in his hand. Not that she would have accepted them;
+she only wondered. These disloyal thoughts came seldom, and she put them
+resolutely away, devoting herself with all the greater assiduity to her muslin
+curtains and ruffled pillow-shams. Stephen, too, had his momentary pangs.
+There were times when he could calm his doubts only by working on the little
+house. The mere sight of the beloved floors and walls and ceilings comforted
+his heart, and brought him good cheer.
+
+The winter was a cold one, so bitterly cold that even the rapid water at the
+Gray Rock was a mass of curdled yellow ice, something that had only occurred
+once or twice before within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.
+
+It was also a very gay season for Pleasant River and Edgewood. Never had there
+been so many card-parties, sleigh-rides, and tavern dances, and never such
+wonderful skating. The river was one gleaming, glittering thoroughfare of ice
+from Milliken's Mills to the dam at the Edgewood bridge. At sundown bonfires
+were built here and there on the mirror-like surface, and all the young people
+from the neighboring villages gathered on the ice; while detachments of merry,
+rosy-cheeked boys and girls, those who preferred coasting, met at the top of
+Brigadier Hill, from which one could get a longer and more perilous slide than
+from any other point in the township.
+
+Claude Merrill, in his occasional visits from Boston, was very much in
+evidence at the Saturday evening ice parties. He was not an artist at the
+sport himself, but he was especially proficient in the art of strapping on a
+lady's skates, and murmuring,--as he adjusted the last buckle,--"The prettiest
+foot and ankle on the river!" It cannot be denied that this compliment gave
+secret pleasure to the fair village maidens who received it, but it was a
+pleasure accompanied by electric shocks of excitement. A girl's foot might
+perhaps be mentioned, if a fellow were daring enough, but the line was rigidly
+drawn at the ankle, which was not a part of the human frame ever alluded to in
+the polite society of Edgewood at that time.
+
+Rose, in her red linsey-woolsey dress and her squirrel furs and cap, was the
+life of every gathering, and when Stephen took her hand and they glided
+upstream, alone together in the crowd, he used to wish that they might skate
+on and on up the crystal ice-path of the river, to the moon itself, whither it
+seemed to lead them.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+The Garden of Eden
+
+But the Saco all this time was meditating one of its surprises. The snapping
+cold weather and the depth to which the water was frozen were aiding it in its
+preparation for the greatest event of the season. On a certain gray Saturday
+in March, after a week of mild temperature, it began to rain as if, after
+months of snowing, it really enjoyed a new form of entertainment. Sunday
+dawned with the very flood-gates of heaven opening, so it seemed. All day long
+the river was rising under its miles of unbroken ice, rising at the
+threatening rate of four inches an hour.
+
+Edgewood went to bed as usual that night, for the bridge at that point was set
+too high to be carried away by freshets, but at other villages whose bridges
+were in less secure position there was little sleep and much anxiety.
+
+At midnight a cry was heard from the men watching at Milliken's Mills. The
+great ice jam had parted from Rolfe's Island and was swinging out into the
+open, pushing everything before it. All the able-bodied men in the village
+turned out of bed, and with lanterns in hand began to clear the stores and
+mills, for it seemed that everything near the river-banks must go before that
+avalanche of ice.
+
+Stephen and Rufus were there helping to save the property of their friends and
+neighbors; Rose and Mite Shapley had stayed the night with a friend, and all
+three girls were shivering with fear and excitement as they stood near the
+bridge, watching the never-to-be-forgotten sight. It is needless to say that
+the Crambry family was on hand, for whatever instincts they may have lacked,
+the instinct for being on the spot when anything was happening, was present in
+them to the most remarkable extent. The town was supporting them in modest
+winter quarters somewhat nearer than Killick to the center of civilization,
+and the first alarm brought them promptly to the scene, Mrs. Crambry remarking
+at intervals: "If I'd known there'd be so many out I'd ought to have worn my
+bunnit; but I ain't got no bunnit, an' if I had they say I ain't got no head
+to wear it on!"
+
+By the time the jam neared the falls it had grown with its accumulations,
+until it was made up of tier after tier of huge ice cakes, piled side by side
+and one upon another, with heaps of trees and branches and drifting lumber
+holding them in place. Some of the blocks stood erect and towered like
+icebergs, and these, glittering in the lights of the twinkling lanterns,
+pushed solemnly forward, cracking, crushing, and cutting everything in their
+way. When the great mass neared the planing mill on the east shore the girls
+covered their eyes, expecting to hear the crash of the falling building; but,
+impelled by the force of some mysterious current, it shook itself ponderously,
+and then, with one magnificent movement, slid up the river-bank, tier
+following tier in grand confusion. This left a water way for the main drift;
+the ice broke in every direction, and down, down, down, from Bonnie Eagle and
+Moderation swept the harvest of the winter freezing. It came thundering over
+the dam, bringing boats, farming implements, posts, supports, and every sort
+of floating lumber with it; and cutting under the flour mill, tipped it
+cleverly over on its side and went crashing on its way down-river. At Edgewood
+it pushed colossal blocks of ice up the banks into the roadway, piling them
+end upon end ten feet in air. Then, tearing and rumbling and booming through
+the narrows, it covered the intervale at Pleasant Point and made a huge ice
+bridge below Union Falls, a bridge so solid that it stood there for days, a
+sight for all the neighboring villages.
+
+This exciting event wonhi haxe forever set apart this winter from ail others
+in Stephen's memory, even had it not been also the winter when he was building
+a house for his future wife. But afterwards, in looking back on the wild night
+of the ice freshet, Stephen remembered that Rose's manner was strained and
+cold and evasive, and that when he had seen her talking with Claude Merrill,
+it had seemed to him that that whippersnapper had looked at her as no
+honorable man in Edgewood ever looked at an engaged girl. He recalled his
+throb of gratitude that Claude lived at a safe distance, and his subsequent
+pang of remorse at doubting, for an instant, Rose's fidelity.
+
+So at length April came, the Saco was still high, turbid, and angry, and the
+boys were waiting at Limington Falls for the "Ossipee drive" to begin. Stephen
+joined them there, for he was restless, and the river called him, as it did
+every spring. Each stubborn log that he encountered gave him new courage and
+power of overcoming. The rush of the water, the noise and roar and dash, the
+exposure and danger, all made the blood run in his veins like new wine. When
+he came back to the farm, all the cobwebs had been blown from his brain, and
+his first interview with Rose was so intoxicating that he went immediately to
+Portland, and bought, in a kind of secret penitence for his former fears, a
+pale pink-flowered wall-paper for the bedroom in the new home. It had once
+been voted down by the entire advisory committee. Mrs. Wiley said that pink
+was foolish and was always sure to fade; and the border, being a mass of solid
+roses, was five cents a yard, virtually a prohibitive price. Mr. Wiley said he
+"should hate to hev a spell of sickness an' lay abed in a room where there was
+things growin' all over the place." He thought "rough-plastered walls, where
+you could lay an' count the spots where the roof leaked, was the most
+entertainin' in sickness." Rose had longed for the lovely pattern, but had
+sided dutifully with the prudent majority, so that it was with a feeling of
+unauthorized and illegitimate joy that Stephen papered the room at night, a
+few strips at a time.
+
+On the third evening, when he had removed all signs of his work, he lighted
+two kerosene lamps and two candles, finding the effect, under this
+illumination, almost too brilliant and beautiful for belief. Rose should never
+see it now, he determined, until the furniture was in place. They had already
+chosen the kitchen and bedroom things, though they would not be needed for
+some months; but the rest was to wait until summer, when there would be the
+hay-money to spend.
+
+Stephen did not go back to the River Farm till one o'clock that night; the
+pink bedroom held him in fetters too powerful to break. It looked like the
+garden of Eden, he thought. To be sure, it was only fifteen feet square; Eden
+might have been a little larger, possibly, but otherwise the pink bedroom had
+every advantage. The pattern of roses growing on a trellis was brighter than
+any flower-bed in June; and the border--well, if the border had been five
+dollars a foot Stephen would not have grudged the money when he saw the twenty
+running yards of rosy bloom rioting under the white ceiling.
+
+Before he blew out the last light he raised it high above his head and took
+one fond, final look. "It's the only place I ever saw," he thought, "that is
+pretty enough for her. She will look just as if she was growing here with all
+the other flowers, and I shall always think of it as the garden of Eden. I
+wonder, if I got the license and the ring and took her by surprise, whether
+she'd be married in June instead of August? I could be all ready if I could
+only persuade her."
+
+At this moment Stephen touched the summit of happiness; and it is a curious
+coincidence that as he was dreaming in his garden of Eden, the serpent, having
+just arrived at Edgewood, was sleeping peacefully at the house of Mrs. Brooks.
+
+It was the serpent's fourth visit that season, and he explained to inquiring
+friends that his former employer had sold the business, and that the new
+management, while reorganizing, had determined to enlarge the premises, the
+three clerks who had been retained having two weeks' vacation with half pay.
+
+It is extraordinary how frequently "wise serpents" are retained by the
+management on half, or even full, salary, while the services of the "harmless
+doves" are dispensed with, and they are set free to flutter where they will. 
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The Serpent
+
+
+Rose Wiley had the brightest eyes in Edgewood. It was impossible to look at
+her without realizing that her physical sight was perfect. What mysterious
+species of blindness is it that descends, now and then, upon human creatures,
+and renders them incapable of judgment or discrimination?
+
+Claude Merrill was a glove salesman in a Boston fancy-goods store. The calling
+itself is undoubtedly respectable, and it is quite conceivable that a man can
+sell gloves and still be a man; but Claude Merrill was a manikin. He inhabited
+a very narrow space behind a very short counter, but to him it seemed the
+earth and the fullness thereof.
+
+When, irreproachably neat and even exquisite in dress, he gave a Napoleonic
+glance at his array of glove-boxes to see if the female assistant had put them
+in proper order for the day, when, with that wonderful eye for detail that had
+wafted him to his present height of power, he pounced upon the
+powder-sprinklers and found them, as he expected, empty; when, with masterly
+judgment, he had made up and ticketed a basket of misfits and odd sizes to
+attract the eyes of women who were their human counterparts, he felt himself
+bursting with the pride and pomp of circumstance. His cambric handkerchief
+adjusted in his coat with the monogram corner well displayed, a last touch to
+the carefully trained lock on his forehead, and he was ready for his
+customers.
+
+"Six, did you say, miss? I should have thought five and three quarters--
+Attend to that gentleman, Miss Dix, please; I am very busy."
+
+"Six-and-a-half gray sue'de? Here they are, an exquisite shade. Shall I try
+them on? The right hand, if you will. Perhaps you'd better remove your elegant
+ring; I should n't like to have anything catch in the setting."
+
+"Miss Dix! Six-and-a-half black glace'--upper shelf, third box--for this lady.
+She's in a hurry. We shall see you often after this, I hope, madam."
+
+"No; we don't keep silk or lisle gloves. We have no call for them; our
+customers prefer kid."
+
+Oh, but he was in his element, was Claude Merrill; though the glamour that
+surrounded him in the minds of the Edgewood girls did not emanate wholly from
+his finicky little person: something of it was the glamour that belonged to
+Boston,--remote, fashionable, gay, rich, almost inaccessible Boston, which
+none could see without the expenditure of five or six dollars in railway fare,
+with the added extravagance of a night in a hotel, if one would explore it
+thoroughly and come home possessed of all its illimitable treasures of wisdom
+and experience.
+
+When Claude came to Edgewood for a Sunday, or to spend a vacation with his
+aunt, he brought with him something of the magic of a metropolis. Suddenly, to
+Rose's eye, Stephen looked larger and clumsier, his shoes were not the proper
+sort, his clothes were ordinary, his neckties were years behind the fashion.
+Stephen's dancing, compared with Claude's, was as the deliberate motion of an
+ox to the hopping of a neat little robin. When Claude took a girl's hand in
+the "grand right-and-left," it was as if he were about to try on a delicate
+glove; the manner in which he "held his lady" in the polka or schottische made
+her seem a queen. Mite Shapley was so affected by it that when Rufus attempted
+to encircle her for the mazurka she exclaimed, "Don't act as if you were
+spearing logs, Rufus!"
+
+Of the two men, Stephen had more to say, but Claude said more. He was thought
+brilliant in conversation; but what wonder, when one considered his advantages
+and his dazzling experiences! He had customers who were worth their thousands;
+ladies whose fingers never touched dish-water; ladies who would n't buy a
+glove of anybody else if they went bare-handed to the grave. He lived with his
+sister Maude Arthurlena in a house where there were twenty-two other boarders
+who could be seated at meals all at the same time, so immense was the
+dining-room. He ate his dinner at a restaurant daily, and expended twenty-five
+cents for it without blenching. He went to the theater once a week, and was
+often accompanied by "lady friends" who were "elegant dressers."
+
+In a moment of wrath Stephen had called him a "counter-jumper," but it was a
+libel. So short and rough a means of exit from his place of power was wholly
+beneath Claude's dignity. It was with a" Pardon me, Miss Dix," that, the noon
+hour having arrived, he squeezed by that slave and victim, and raising the
+hinged board that separated his kingdom from that of the ribbon department,
+passed out of the store, hat in hand, serene in the consciousness that though
+other clerks might nibble luncheon from a brown paper bag, he would speedily
+be indulging in an expensive repast; and Miss Dix knew it, and it was a part
+of his almost invincible attraction for her.
+
+It seemed flying in the face of Providence to decline the attentions of such a
+gorgeous butterfly of fashion simply because one was engaged to marry another
+man at some distant day.
+
+All Edgewood femininity united in saying that there never was such a perfect
+gentleman as Claude Merrill; and during the time when his popularity was at
+its height Rose lost sight of the fact that Stephen could have furnished the
+stuff for a dozen Claudes and have had enough left for an ordinary man
+besides.
+
+April gave place to May, and a veil hung between the lovers,--an intangible,
+gossamer-like thing, not to be seen with the naked eye, but, oh! so plainly to
+be felt. Rose hid herself thankfully behind it, while Stephen had not courage
+to lift a corner. She had twice been seen driving with Claude Merrill--that
+Stephen knew; but she had explained that there were errands to be done, that
+her grandfather had taken the horse, and that Mr. Merrill's escort had been
+both opportune and convenient for these practical reasons. Claude was
+everywhere present, the center of attraction, the observed of all observers.
+He was irresistible, contagious, almost epidemic. Rose was now gay, now
+silent; now affectionate, now distant, now coquettish; in fine, everything
+that was capricious, mysterious, agitating, incomprehensible.
+
+One morning Alcestis Crambry went to the post-office for Stephen and brought
+him back the newspapers and letters. He had hung about the River Farm so much
+that Stephen finally gave him bed and food in exchange for numberless small
+errands. Rufus was temporarily confined in a dark room with some strange pain
+and trouble in his eyes, and Alcestis proved of use in many ways. He had
+always been Rose's slave, and had often brought messages and notes from the
+Brier Neighborhood, so that when Stephen saw a folded note among the papers
+his heart gave a throb of anticipation.
+
+The note was brief, and when he had glanced through it he said: "This is not
+mine, Alcestis; it belongs to Miss Rose. Go straight back and give it to her
+as you were told; and another time keep your wits about you, or I'll send you
+back to Killick."
+
+Alcestis Crambry's ideas on all subjects were extremely vague. Claude Merrill
+had given him a letter for Rose, but his notion was that anything that
+belonged to her belonged to Stephen, and the Waterman place was much nearer
+than the Wileys', particularly at dinner-time!
+
+When the boy had slouched away, Stephen sat under the apple tree, now a mass
+of roseate bloom, and buried his face in his hands.
+
+It was not precisely a love-letter that he had read, nevertheless it blackened
+the light of the sun for him. Claude asked Rose to meet him anywhere on the
+road to the station and to take a little walk, as he was leaving that
+afternoon and could not bear to say good-bye to her in the presence of her
+grandmother. "_Under_the_circumstances_," he wrote, deeply underlining the
+words, "I cannot remain a moment longer in Edgewood, where I have been so
+happy and so miserable!" He did not refer to the fact that the time limit on
+his return-ticket expired that day, for his dramatic instinct told him that
+such sordid matters have no place in heroics.
+
+Stephen sat motionless under the tree for an hour, deciding on some plan of
+action. He had work at the little house, but he did not dare go there lest he
+should see the face of dead Love looking from the windows of the pink bedroom;
+dead Love, cold, sad, merciless. His cheeks burned as he thought of the
+marriage license and the gold ring hidden away upstairs in the drawer of his
+shaving stand. What a romantic fool he had been, to think he could hasten the
+glad day by a single moment! What a piece of boyish folly it had been, and how
+it shamed him in his own eyes!
+
+When train time drew near he took his boat and paddled downstream. If for the
+Finland lover's reindeer there was but one path in all the world, and that the
+one that led to Her, so it was for Stephen's canoe, which, had it been set
+free on the river by day or by night, might have floated straight to Rose.
+
+He landed at the usual place, a bit of sandy shore near the Wiley house, and
+walked drearily up the bank through the woods. Under the shade of the pines
+the white stars of the hepatica glistened and the pale anemones were coming
+into bloom. Partridge-berries glowed red under their glossy leaves, and clumps
+of violets sweetened the air. Squirrels chattered, woodpeckers tapped,
+thrushes sang; but Stephen was blind and deaf to all the sweet harbingers of
+spring.
+
+Just then he heard voices, realizing with a throb of delight that, at any
+rate, Rose had not left home to meet Claude, as he had asked her to do.
+Looking through the branches, he saw the two standing together, Mrs. Brooks's
+horse, with the offensive trunk in the back of the wagon, being hitched to a
+tree near by. There was nothing in the tableau to stir Stephen to fury, but he
+read between the lines and suffered as he read--suffered and determined to
+sacrifice himself if he must, so that Rose could have what she wanted, this
+miserable apology for a man. He had never been the husband for Rose; she must
+take her place in a larger community, worthy of her beauty and charm.
+
+Claude was talking and gesticulating ardently. Rose's head was bent and the
+tears were rolling down her cheeks. Suddenly Claude raised his hat, and with a
+passionate gesture of renunciation walked swiftly to the wagon, and looking
+back once, drove off with the utmost speed of which the Brooks's horse was
+capable,--Rose waving him a farewell with one hand and wiping her eyes with
+the other.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+The Turquoise Ring
+
+
+Stephen stood absolutely still in front of the opening in the trees, and as
+Rose turned she met him face to face. She had never dreamed his eyes could be
+so stern, his mouth so hard, and she gave a sob like a child.
+
+"You seem to be in trouble," Stephen said in a voice so cold she thought it
+could not be his.
+
+"I am not in trouble, exactly," Rose stammered, concealing her discomfiture as
+well as possible. "I am a little unhappy because I have made some one else
+unhappy; and now that you know it, you will be unhappy too, and angry besides,
+I suppose, though you've seen everything there was to see."
+
+"There is no occasion for sorrow," Stephen said. "I did n't mean to break in
+on any interview; I came over to give you back your freedom. If you ever cared
+enough for me to marry me, the time has gone by. I am willing to own that I
+over-persuaded you, but I am not the man to take a girl against her
+inclinations, so we will say good-bye and end the thing here and now. I can
+only wish"--here his smothered rage at fate almost choked him- "that, when you
+were selecting another husband, you had chosen a whole man!"
+
+Rose quivered with the scorn of his tone. "Size is n't everything!" she
+blazed.
+
+"Not in bodies, perhaps; but it counts for something in hearts and brains, and
+it is convenient to have a sense of honor that's at least as big as a grain of
+mustard-seed."
+
+"Claude Merrill is not dishonorable," Rose exclaimed impetuously; "or at least
+he is n't as bad as you think: he has never asked me to marry him."
+
+"Then he probably was not quite ready to speak, or perhaps you were not quite
+ready to hear," retorted Stephen, bitterly; "but don't let us have words,-
+there'll be enough to regret without adding those. I have seen, ever since New
+Year's, that you were not really happy or contented; only I would n't allow it
+to myself; I kept hoping against hope that I was mistaken. There have been
+times when I would have married you, willing or unwilling, but I did n't love
+you so well then; and now that there's another man in the case, it's
+different, and I'm strong enough to do the right thing. Follow your heart and
+be happy; in a year or two I shall be glad I had the grit to tell you so.
+Good-bye, Rose!"
+
+Rose, pale with amazement, summoned all her pride, and drawing the turquoise
+engagement ring from her finger, handed it silently to Stephen, hiding her
+face as he flung it vehemently down the river-bank. His dull eyes followed it
+and half uncomprehendingly saw it settle and glisten in a nest of brown
+pine-needles. Then he put out his hand for a last clasp and strode away
+without a word.
+
+Presently Rose heard first the scrape of his boat on the sand, then the soft
+sound of his paddles against the water, then nothing but the squirrels and the
+woodpeckers and the thrushes, then not even these,--nothing but the beating of
+her own heart.
+
+She sat down heavily, feeling as if she were wide awake for the first time in
+many weeks. How had things come to this pass with her?
+
+Claude Merrill had flattered her vanity and given her some moments of
+restlessness and dissatisfaction with her lot; but he had not until today
+really touched her heart or tempted her, even momentarily, from her allegiance
+to Stephen. His eyes had always looked unspeakable things; his voice had
+seemed to breathe feelings that he had never dared put in words; but today he
+had really stirred her, for although he had still been vague, it was easy to
+see that his love for her had passed all bounds of discretion. She remembered
+his impassioned farewells, his despair, his doubt as to whether he could
+forget her by plunging into the vortex of business, or whether he had better
+end it all in the river, as so many other broken-hearted fellows had done. She
+had been touched by his misery, even against her better judgment; and she had
+intended to confess it all to Stephen sometime, telling him that she should
+never again accept attentions from a stranger, lest a tragedy like this should
+happen twice in a lifetime.
+
+She had imagined that Stephen would be his large-minded, great-hearted,
+magnanimous self, and beg her to forget this fascinating will-o'-the-wisp by
+resting in his deeper, serener love. She had meant to be contrite and
+faithful, praying nightly that poor Claude might live down his present
+anguish, of which she had been the innocent cause.
+
+Instead, what had happened? She had been put altogether in the wrong. Stephen
+had almost cast her off, and that, too, without argument. He had given her her
+liberty before she had asked for it, taking it for granted, without question,
+that she desired to be rid of him. Instead of comforting her in her remorse,
+or sympathizing with her for so nobly refusing to shine in Claude's larger
+world of Boston, Stephen had assumed that she was disloyal in every
+particular.
+
+And pray how was she to cope with such a disagreeable and complicated
+situation?
+
+It would not be long before the gossips rolled under their tongues the
+delicious morsel of a broken engagement, and sooner or later she must brave
+the displeasure of her grandmother.
+
+And the little house--that was worse than anything. Her tears flowed faster as
+she thought of Stephen's joy in it, of his faithful labor, of the savings he
+had invested in it. She hated and despised herself when she thought of the
+house, and for the first time in her life she realized the limitations of her
+nature, the poverty of her ideals.
+
+What should she do? She had lost Stephen and ruined his life. Now, in order
+that she need not blight a second career, must she contrive to return Claude's
+love? To be sure, she thought, it seemed indecent to marry any other man than
+Stephen, when they had built a house together, and chosen wallpapers, and a
+kitchen stove, and dining-room chairs; but was it not the only way to evade
+the difficulties?
+
+Suppose that Stephen, in a fit of pique, should ask somebody else to share the
+new cottage?
+
+As this dreadful possibility came into view, Rose's sobs actually frightened
+the birds and the squirrels. She paced back and forth under the trees,
+wondering how she could have been engaged to a man for eight months and know
+so little about him as she seemed to know about Stephen Waterman today. Who
+would have believed he could be so autocratic, so severe, SS so
+unapproachable? Who could have foreseen that she, Rose Wiley, would ever be
+given up to another man,--handed over as coolly as if she had been a bale of
+cotton? She wanted to return Claude Merrill's love because it was the only way
+out of the tangle; but at the moment she almost hated him for making so much
+trouble, for hurting Stephen, for abasing her in her own eyes, and, above all,
+for giving her rustic lover the chance of impersonating an injured emperor.
+
+It did not simplify the situation to have Mite Shapley come in during the
+evening and run upstairs, uninvited, to sit on the foot of her bed and
+chatter.
+
+Rose had closed her blinds and lay in the dark, pleading a headache. Mite was
+in high feather. She had met Claude Merrill going to the station that
+afternoon. He was much too early for the train, which the station agent
+reported to be behind time, so he had asked her to take a drive. She did n't
+know how it happened, for he looked at his watch every now and then; but,
+anyway, they got to laughing and "carrying on," and when they came back to the
+station the train had gone. Was n't that the greatest joke of the season? What
+did Rose suppose they did next?
+
+Rose did n't know and did n't care; her head ached too badly.
+
+Well, they had driven to Wareham, and Claude had hired a livery team there,
+and had been taken into Portland with his trunk, and she had brought Mrs.
+Brooks's horse back to Edgewood. Was n't that ridiculous? And had n't she cut
+out Rose where she least expected?
+
+Rose was distinctly apathetic, and Mite Shapley departed after a very brief
+call, leaving behind her an entirely new train of thought.
+
+If Claude Merrill were so love-blighted that he could only by the greatest
+self-control keep from flinging himself into the river, how could he conceal
+his sufferings so completely from Mite Shapley,--little shallow-pated,
+scheming coquette?
+
+
+"So that pretty Merrill feller has gone, has he, mother?" inquired Old
+Kennebec that night, as he took off his wet shoes and warmed his feet at the
+kitchen oven. "Well, it ain't a mite too soon. I allers distrust that
+pink-an'-white, rosy-posy kind of a man. One of the most turrible things that
+ever happened in Gard'ner was brought about by jest sech a feller. Mothers hed
+n't hardly ought to name their boy babies Claude without they expect 'em to
+play the dickens with the girls. I don' know nothin' 'bout the fust Claude,
+there ain't none of 'em in the Bible, air they, but whoever he was, I bate ye
+he hed a deceivin' tongue. If it hed n't be'n for me, that Claude in Gard'ner
+would 'a' run away with my brother's fust wife; an' I'll tell ye jest how I
+contrived to put a spoke in his wheel."
+
+But Mrs. Wiley, being already somewhat familiar with the circumstances, had
+taken her candle and retired to her virtuous couch.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+Rose Sees the World
+
+
+Was this the world, after all? Rose asked herself; and, if so, what was amiss
+with it, and where was the charm, the bewilderment, the intoxication, the
+glamour?
+
+She had been glad to come to Boston, for the last two weeks in Edgewood had
+proved intolerable. She had always been a favorite heretofore, from the days
+when the boys fought for the privilege of dragging her sled up the hills, and
+filling her tiny mitten with peppermints, down to the year when she came home
+from the Wareham Female Seminary, an acknowledged belle and beauty. Suddenly
+she had felt her popularity dwindling. There was no real change in the
+demeanor of her acquaintances, but there was a certain subtle difference of
+atmosphere. Everybody sympathized tacitly with Stephen, and she did not
+wonder, for there were times when she secretly took his part against herself.
+Only a few candid friends had referred to the rupture openly in conversation,
+but these had been blunt in their disapproval.
+
+It seemed part of her ill fortune that just at this time Rufus should be
+threatened with partial blindness, and that Stephen's heart, already sore,
+should be torn with new anxieties. She could hardly bear to see the doctor's
+carriage drive by day after day, and hear night after night that Rufus was
+unresigned, melancholy, half mad; while Stephen, as the doctor said, was
+brother, mother, and father in one, as gentle as a woman, as firm as
+Gibraltar.
+
+These foes to her peace of mind all came from within; but without was the
+hourly reproach of her grandmother, whose scorching tongue touched every
+sensitive spot in the girl's nature and burned it like fire.
+
+Finally a way of escape opened. Mrs. Wealthy Brooks, who had always been
+rheumatic, grew suddenly worse. She had heard of a "magnetic" physician in
+Boston, also of one who used electricity with wonderful effect, and she
+announced her intention of taking both treatments impartially and alternately.
+The neighbors were quite willing that Wealthy Ann Brooks should spend the
+deceased Ezra's money in any way she pleased,--she had earned it, goodness
+knows, by living with him for twenty-five years,--but before the day for her
+departure arrived her right arm and knee became so much more painful that it
+was impossible for her to travel alone.
+
+At this juncture Rose was called upon to act as nurse and companion in a
+friendly way. She seized the opportunity hungrily as a way out of her present
+trouble; but, knowing what Mrs. Brooks's temper was in time of health, she
+could see clearly what it was likely to prove when pain and anguish wrung the
+brow.
+
+Rose had been in Boston now for some weeks, and she was sitting in the Joy
+Street boarding-house,--Joy Street, forsooth! It was nearly bedtime, and she
+was looking out upon a huddle of roofs and back yards, upon a landscape filled
+with clothes-lines, ash-barrels, and ill-fed cats. There were no sleek country
+tabbies, with the memory in their eyes of tasted cream, nothing but city-born,
+city-bred, thin, despairing cats of the pavement, cats no more forlorn than
+Rose herself.
+
+She had "seen Boston," for she had accompanied Mrs. Brooks in the horse-cars
+daily to the two different temples of healing where that lady worshiped and
+offered sacrifices. She had also gone with Maude Arthurlena to Claude
+Merrill's store to buy a pair of gloves, and had overheard Miss Dix (the
+fashionable "lady assistant" before mentioned) say to Miss Brackett of the
+ribbon department, that she thought Mr. Merrill must have worn his blinders
+that time he stayed so long in Edgewood. This bit of polished irony was
+unintelligible to Rose at first, but she mastered it after an hour's
+reflection. She was n't looking her best that day, she knew; the cotton
+dresses that seemed so pretty at home were common and countrified here, and
+her best black cashmere looked cheap and shapeless beside Miss Dix's
+brilliantine. Miss Dix's figure was her strong point, and her dressmaker was
+particularly skillful in the arts of suggestion, concealment, and revelation.
+Beauty has its chosen backgrounds. Rose in white dimity, standing knee deep in
+her blossoming brier bushes, the river running at her feet, dark pine trees
+behind her graceful head, sounded depths and touched heights of harmony
+forever beyond the reach of the modish Miss Dix, but she was out of her
+element and suffered accordingly.
+
+Rose had gone to walk with Claude one evening when she first arrived. He had
+shown her the State House and the Park Street Church, and sat with her on one
+of the benches in the Common until nearly ten. She knew that Mrs. Brooks had
+told her nephew of the broken engagement, but he made no reference to the
+matter, save to congratulate her that she was rid of a man who was so clumsy,
+so dull and behind the times, as Stephen Waterman, saying that he had always
+marveled she could engage herself to anybody who could insult her by offering
+her a turquoise ring.
+
+Claude was very interesting that evening, Rose thought, but rather gloomy and
+unlike his former self. He referred to his grave responsibilities, to the
+frail health of Maude Arthurlena, and to the vicissitudes of business. He
+vaguely intimated that his daily life in the store was not so pleasant as it
+had been formerly; that there were "those" (he would speak no more plainly)
+who embarrassed him with undesired attentions, "those" who, without the
+smallest shadow of right, vexed him with petty jealousies.
+
+Rose dared not ask questions on so delicate a topic, but she remembered in a
+flash Miss Dix's heavy eyebrows, snapping eyes, and high color. Claude seemed
+very happy that Rose had come to Boston, though he was surprised, knowing what
+a trial his aunt must be, now that she was so helpless. It was unfortunate,
+also, that Rose could not go on excursions without leaving his aunt alone, or
+he should have been glad to offer his escort. He pressed her hand when he left
+her at her door, telling her she could never realize what a comfort her
+friendship was to him; could never imagine how thankful he was that she had
+courageously freed herself from ties that in time would have made her
+wretched. His heart was full, he said, of feelings he dared not utter; but in
+the near future, when certain clouds had rolled by, he would unlock its
+treasures, and then--but no more tonight: he could not trust himself.
+
+Rose felt as if she were assuming one of the characters in a mysterious
+romance, such as unfolded itself only in books or in Boston; but thrilling as
+it was, it was nevertheless extremely unsatisfactory.
+
+Convinced that Claude Merrill was passionately in love with her, one of her
+reasons for coming to Boston had been to fall more deeply in love with him,
+and thus heal some, at least, of the wounds she had inflicted. It may have
+been a foolish idea, but after three weeks it seemed still worse,--a useless
+one; for after several interviews she felt herself drifting farther and
+farther from Claude; and if he felt any burning ambition to make her his own,
+he certainly concealed it with admirable art. Given up, with the most
+offensive magnanimity, by Stephen, and not greatly desired by Claude,--that
+seemed the present status of proud Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood.
+
+It was June, she remembered, as she leaned out of the open window; at least it
+was June in Edgewood, and she supposed for convenience' sake they called it
+June in Boston. Not that it mattered much what the poor city prisoners called
+it. How beautiful the river would be at home, with the trees along the banks
+in full leaf! How she hungered and thirsted for the river,--to see it sparkle
+in the sunlight; to watch the moonglade stretching from one bank to the other;
+to hear the soft lap of the water on the shore, and the distant murmur of the
+falls at the bridge! And the Brier Neighborhood would be at its loveliest, for
+the wild roses were in blossom by now. And the little house! How sweet it must
+look under the shade of the elms, with the Saco rippling at the back! Was poor
+Rufus still lying in a darkened room, and was Stephen nursing him,
+--disappointed Stephen, dear, noble old Stephen?
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Gold and Pinchbeck
+
+
+Just then Mrs. Brooks groaned in the next room and called Rose, who went in to
+minister to her real needs, or to condole with her fancied ones, whichever
+course of action appeared to be the more agreeable at the moment.
+
+Mrs. Brooks desired conversation, it seemed, or at least she desired an
+audience for a monologue, for she recognized no antiphonal obligations on the
+part of her listeners. The doctors were not doing her a speck of good, and she
+was just squandering money in a miserable boarding-house, when she might be
+enjoying poor health in her own home; and she did n't believe her hens were
+receiving proper care, and she had forgotten to pull down the shades in the
+spare room, and the sun would fade the carpet out all white before she got
+back, and she did n't believe Dr. Smith's magnetism was any more use than a
+cat's foot, nor Dr. Robinson's electricity any better than a bumblebee's buzz,
+and she had a great mind to go home and try Dr. Lord from Bonnie Eagle; and
+there was a letter for Rose on the bureau, which had come before supper, but
+the shiftless, lazy, worthless landlady had forgotten to send it up till just
+now.
+
+The letter was from Mite Shapley, but Rose could read only half of it to Mrs.
+Brooks, little beside the news that the Waterman barn, the finest barn in the
+whole township, had been struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Stephen
+was away at the time, having taken Rufus to Portland, where an operation on
+his eyes would shortly be performed at the hospital, and one of the neighbors
+was sleeping at the River Farm and taking care of the cattle; still the house
+might not have been saved but for one of Alcestis Crambry's sudden bursts of
+common sense, which occurred now quite regularly. He succeeded not only in
+getting the horses out of the stalls, but gave the alarm so promptly that the
+whole neighborhood was soon on the scene of action. Stephen was the only man,
+Mite reminded Rose, who ever had any patience with, or took any pains to
+teach, Alcestis, but he never could have expected to be rewarded in this
+practical way. The barn was only partly insured; and when she had met Stephen
+at the station next day, and condoled with him on his loss, he had said: "Oh,
+well, Mite, a little more or less does n't make much difference just now."
+
+"The rest would n't interest you, Mrs. Brooks," said Rose, precipitately
+preparing to leave the room.
+
+"Something about Claude, I suppose," ventured that astute lady. "I think Mite
+kind of fancied him. I don't believe he ever gave her any real encouragement;
+but he'd make love to a pump, Claude Merrill would, and so would his father
+before him. How my sister Abby made out to land him we never knew, for they
+said he'd proposed to every woman in the town of Bingham, not excepting the
+wooden Indian girl in front of the cigar-store, and not one of 'em but our
+Abby ever got a chance to name the day. Abby was as set as the everlastin'
+hills, and if she'd made up her mind to have a man he could n't wriggle away
+from her nohow in the world. It beats all how girls do run after these
+slick-haired, sweet-tongued, Miss Nancy kind o' fellers, that ain't but little
+good as beaux an' worth less than nothing as husbands."
+
+Rose scarcely noticed what Mrs. Brooks said, she was too anxious to read the
+rest of Mite Shapley's letter in the quiet of her own room.
+
+   Stephen looks thin and pale [so it ran on], but he does not allow anybody
+   to sympathize with him. I think you ought to know something that I have n't
+   told before for fear of hurting your feelings; but if I were in your place
+   I'd like to hear everything, and then you'll know how to act when you come
+   home. Just after you left, Stephen ploughed up all the land in front of
+   your new house,--every inch of it, all up and down the road, between the
+   fence and the front doorstep,--and then he planted corn where you were
+   going to have your flower-beds. He has closed all the blinds and hung a "To
+   Let" sign on the large elm at the gate. Stephen never was spiteful in his
+   life, but this looks a little like spite. Perhaps he only wanted to save
+   his self-respect and let people know that everything between you was over
+   forever. Perhaps he thought it would stop talk once and for all. But you
+   won't mind, you lucky girl, staying nearly three months in Boston! [So
+   Almira purled on in violet ink, with shaded letters.] How I wish it had
+   come my way, though I'm not good at rubbing rheumatic patients, even when
+   they are _his_ aunt. Is _he_ as devoted as ever? And when will _it_ be? How
+   do you like the theater? Mother thinks you won't attend; but, by what he
+   used to say, I am sure church members in Boston always go to amusements.
+
+       Your loving friend,
+              Almira Shapley.
+
+   P.S. They say Rufus's doctor's bills here, and the operation and hospital
+   expenses in Portland, will mount up to five hundred dollars. Of course
+   Stephen will be dreadfully hampered by the toss of his barn, and maybe he
+   wants to let your house that was to be, because he really needs money. In
+   that case the dooryard won't be very attractive to tenants, with corn
+   planted right up to the steps and no path left! It's two feet tall now, and
+   by August (just when you were intending to move in) it will hide the front
+   windows. Not that you'll care, with a diamond on your engagement finger!
+
+
+The letter was more than flesh and blood could stand, and Rose flung herself
+on her bed to think and regret and repent, and, if possible, to sob herself to
+sleep.
+
+She knew now that she had never admired and respected Stephen so much as at
+the moment when, under the reproach of his eyes, she had given him back his
+ring. When she left Edgewood and parted with him forever she had really loved
+him better than when she had promised to marry him.
+
+Claude Merrill, on his native Boston heath, did not appear the romantic,
+inspiring figure he had once been in her eyes. A week ago she distrusted him;
+tonight she despised him.
+
+What had happened to Rose was the dilation of her vision. She saw things under
+a wider sky and in a clearer light. Above all, her heart was wrung with pity
+for Stephen--Stephen, with no comforting woman's hand to help him in his sore
+trouble; Stephen, bearing his losses alone, his burdens and anxieties alone,
+his nursing and daily work alone. Oh, how she felt herself needed! Needed!
+that was the magic word that unlocked her better nature. "Darkness is the time
+for making roots and establishing plants, whether of the soil or of the soul,"
+and all at once Rose had become a woman: a little one, perhaps, but a whole
+woman--and a bit of an angel, too, with healing in her wings. When and how had
+this metamorphosis come about? Last summer the fragile brier-rose had hung
+over the river and looked at its pretty reflection in the placid surface of
+the water. Its few buds and blossoms were so lovely, it sighed for nothing
+more. The changes in the plant had been wrought secretly and silently. In some
+mysterious way, as common to soul as to plant life, the roots had gathered in
+more nourishment from the earth, they had stored up strength and force, and
+all at once there was a marvelous fructifying of the plant, hardiness of
+stalk, new shoots everywhere, vigorous leafage, and a shower of blossoms.
+
+But everything was awry: Boston was a failure; Claude was a weakling and a
+flirt; her turquoise ring was lying on the river-bank; Stephen did not love
+her any longer; her flower-beds were ploughed up and planted in corn; and the
+cottage that Stephen had built and she had furnished, that beloved cottage,
+was to let.
+
+She was in Boston; but what did that amount to, after all? What was the State
+House to a bleeding heart, or the Old South Church to a pride wounded like
+hers?
+
+At last she fell asleep, but it was only by stopping her ears to the noises of
+the city streets and making herself imagine the sound of the river rippling
+under her bedroom windows at home. The backyards of Boston faded, and in their
+place came the banks of the Saco, strewn with pine-needles, fragrant with wild
+flowers. Then there was the bit of sunny beach, where Stephen moored his boat.
+She could hear the sound of his paddle. Boston lovers came a-courting in the
+horse-cars, but hers had floated downstream to her just at dusk in a birch-
+bark canoe, or sometimes, in the moonlight, on a couple of logs rafted
+together.
+
+But it was all over now, and she could see only Stephen's stern face as he
+flung the despised turquoise ring down the river-bank.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+A Country Chevalier
+
+
+it was early in August when Mrs. Wealthy Brooks announced her speedy return
+from Boston to Edgewood.
+
+"It's jest as well Rose is comin' back," said Mr. Wiley to his wife. "I never
+favored her goin' to Boston, where that rosy-posy Claude feller is. When he
+was down here he was kep' kind o' tied up in a box-stall, but there he's
+caperin' loose round the pastur'."
+
+"I should think Rose would be ashamed to come back, after the way she's
+carried on," remarked Mrs. Wiley, "but if she needed punishment I guess she's
+got it bein' comp'ny-keeper to Wealthy Ann Brooks. Bein' a church member in
+good an' reg'lar standin', I s'pose Wealthy Ann'll go to heaven, but I can
+only say that it would be a sight pleasanter place for a good many if she did
+n't."
+
+"Rose has be'n foolish an' flirty an' wrong-headed," allowed her grandfather;
+"but it won't do no good to treat her like a hardened criminile, same's you
+did afore she went away. She ain't hardly got her wisdom teeth cut, in love
+affairs! She ain't broke the laws of the State o' Maine, nor any o' the ten
+commandments; she ain't disgraced the family, an' there's a chance for her to
+reform, seein' as how she ain't twenty year old yet. I was turrible wild an'
+hot-headed myself afore you ketched me an' tamed me down."
+
+"You ain't so tame now as I wish you was," Mrs. Wiley replied testily.
+
+"If you could smoke a clay pipe 't would calm your nerves, mother, an' help
+you to git some philosophy inter you; you need a little philosophy turrible
+bad."
+
+"I need patience consid'able more," was Mrs. Wiley's withering retort.
+
+"That's the way with folks," said Old Kennebec reflectively, as he went on
+peacefully puffing. "If you try to indoose 'em to take an int'rest in a
+bran'-new virtue, they won't look at it; but they 'll run down a side street
+an' buy half a yard more o' some turrible old shop-worn trait o' character
+that they've kep' in stock all their lives, an' that everybody's sick to death
+of. There was a man in Gard'ner--"
+
+But alas! the experiences of the Gardiner man, though told in the same
+delightful fashion that had won Mrs. Wiley's heart many years before, now fell
+upon the empty air. In these years of Old Kennebec's "anecdotage," his pipe
+was his best listener and his truest confidant.
+
+Mr. Wiley's constant intercessions with his wife made Rose's home-coming
+somewhat easier, and the sight of her own room and belongings soothed her
+troubled spirit, but the days went on, and nothing happened to change the
+situation. She had lost a lover, that was all, and there were plenty more to
+choose from, or there always had been; but the only one she wanted was the one
+who made no sign. She used to think that she could twist Stephen around her
+little finger; that she had only to beckon to him and he would follow her to
+the ends of the earth. Now fear had entered her heart. She no longer felt
+sure, because she no longer felt worthy, of him, and feeling both uncertainty
+and unworthiness, her lips were sealed and she was rendered incapable of
+making any bid for forgiveness.
+
+So the little world of Pleasant River went on, to all outward seeming, as it
+had ever gone. On one side of the stream a girl's heart was longing, and
+pining, and sickening, with hope deferred, and growing, too, with such
+astonishing rapidity that the very angels marveled! And on the other, a man's
+whole vision of life and duty was widening and deepening under the fructifying
+influence of his sorrow.
+
+The corn waved high and green in front of the vacant riverside cottage, but
+Stephen sent no word or message to Rose. He had seen her once, but only from a
+distance. She seemed paler and thinner, he thought,--the result, probably, of
+her metropolitan gayeties. He heard no rumor of any engagement and he wondered
+if it were possible that her love for Claude Merrill had not, after all, been
+returned in kind. This seemed a wild impossibility. His mind refused to
+entertain the supposition that any man on earth could resist falling in love
+with Rose, or, having fallen in, that he could ever contrive to climb out. So
+he worked on at his farm harder than ever, and grew soberer and more careworn
+daily. Rufus had never seemed so near and dear to him as in these weeks when
+he had lived under the shadow of threatened blindness. The burning of the barn
+and the strain upon their slender property brought the brothers together
+shoulder to shoulder.
+
+"If you lose your girl, Steve," said the boy, "and I lose my eyesight, and we
+both lose the barn, why, it'll be us two against the world, for a spell!"
+
+The "To Let" sign on the little house was an arrant piece of hypocrisy.
+Nothing but the direst extremity could have caused him to allow an alien step
+on that sacred threshold. The ploughing up of the flower-beds and planting of
+the corn had served a double purpose. It showed the too curious public the
+finality of his break with Rose and her absolute freedom; it also prevented
+them from suspecting that he still entered the place. His visits were not
+many, but he could not bear to let the dust settle on the furniture that he
+and Rose had chosen together; and whenever he locked the door and went back to
+the River Farm, he thought of a verse in the Bible: "Therefore the Lord God
+sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was
+taken."
+
+
+It was now Friday of the last week in August.
+
+The river was full of logs, thousands upon thousands of them covering the
+surface of the water from the bridge almost up to the Brier Neighborhood. The
+Edgewood drive was late, owing to a long drought and low water; but it was to
+begin on the following Monday, and Lije Dennett and his under boss were
+looking over the situation and planning the campaign. As they leaned over the
+bridge-rail they saw Mr. Wiley driving clown the river road. When he caught
+sight of them he hitched the old white horse at the corner and walked toward
+them, filling his pipe the while in his usual leisurely manner. "We're not
+busy this forenoon," said Lije Dennett. "S'pose we stand right here and let
+Old Kennebec have his say out for once. We've never heard the end of one of
+his stories, an' he's be'n talkin' for twenty years."
+
+"All right," rejoined his companion, with a broad grin at the idea. "I'm
+willin', if you are; but who's goin' to tell our fam'lies the reason we've
+deserted 'em? I bate yer we shan't budge till the crack o' doom. The road
+commissioner'll come along once a year and mend the bridge under our feet, but
+Old Kennebec'll talk straight on till the day o' jedgment."
+
+Mr. Wiley had one of the most enjoyable mornings of his life, and felt that
+after half a century of neglect his powers were at last appreciated by his
+fellow citizens.
+
+He proposed numerous strategic movements to be made upon the logs, whereby
+they would move more swiftly than usual. He described several successful
+drives on the Kennebec, when the logs had melted down the river almost by
+magic, owing to his generalship; and he paid a tribute, in passing, to the
+docility of the boss, who on that occasion had never moved a single log
+without asking his advice.
+
+From this topic he proceeded genially to narrate the life-histories of the
+boss, the under boss, and several Indians belonging to the crew,--histories in
+which he himself played a gallant and conspicuous part. The conversation then
+drifted naturally to the exploits of river-drivers in general, and Mr. Wiley
+narrated the sorts of feats in log-riding, pick-pole-throwing, and the
+shooting of rapids that he had done in his youth. These stories were such as
+had seldom been heard by the ear of man; and, as they passed into circulation
+instantaneously, we are probably enjoying some of them to this day.
+
+They were still being told when a Crambry child appeared on the bridge,
+bearing a note for the old man. Upon reading it he moved off rapidly in the
+direction of the store, ejaculating: "Bless my soul! I clean forgot that
+saleratus, and mother's settin' at the kitchen table with the bowl in her lap,
+waitin' for it! Got so int'rested in your list'nin' I never thought o' the
+time."
+
+The connubial discussion that followed this breach of discipline began on the
+arrival of the saleratus, and lasted through supper; and Rose went to bed
+almost immediately afterward for very dullness and apathy. Her life stretched
+out before her in the most aimless and monotonous fashion. She saw nothing but
+heartache in the future; and that she richly deserved it made it none the
+easier to bear.
+
+Feeling feverish and sleepless, she slipped on her gray Shaker cloak and stole
+quietly downstairs for a breath of air. Her grandfather and grandmother were
+talking on the piazza, and good humor seemed to have been restored. "I was
+over to the tavern tonight," she heard him say, as she sat down at a little
+distance. "I was over to the tavern tonight, an' a feller from Gorham got to
+talkin' an' braggin' 'bout what a stock o' goods they kep' in the store over
+there. 'An',' says I, 'I bate ye dollars to doughnuts that there hain't a darn
+thing ye can ask for at Bill Pike's store at Pleasant River that he can't go
+down cellar, or up attic, or out in the barn chamber an' git for ye.' Well,
+sir, he took me up, an' I borrered the money of Joe Dennett, who held the
+stakes, an' we went right over to Bill Pike's with all the boys follerin' on
+behind. An' the Gorham man never let on what he was going to ask for till the
+hull crowd of us got inside the store. Then says he, as p'lite as a basket o'
+chips, 'Mr. Pike, I'd like to buy a pulpit if you can oblige me with one.'
+
+"Bill scratched his head an' I held my breath. Then says he, "Pears to me I'd
+ought to hev a pulpit or two, if I can jest remember where I keep 'em. I don't
+never cal'late to be out o' pulpits, but I'm so plagued for room I can't keep
+'em in here with the groc'ries. Jim (that's his new store boy), you jest take
+a lantern an' run out in the far corner o' the shed, at the end o' the hickory
+woodpile, an' see how many pulpits we've got in stock!' Well, Jim run out, an'
+when he come back he says, 'We've got two, Mr. Pike. Shall I bring one of 'em
+in?'
+
+"At that the boys all bust out laughin' an' hollerin' an' tauntin' the Gorham
+man, an' he paid up with a good will, I tell ye!"
+
+"I don't approve of bettin'," said Mrs. Wiley grimly, "but I'll try to
+sanctify the money by usin' it for a new wash-boiler."
+
+"The fact is," explained Old Kennebec, somewhat confused, "that the boys made
+me spend every cent of it then an' there."
+
+Rose heard her grandmother's caustic reply, and then paid no further attention
+until her keen ear caught the sound of Stephen's name. It was a part of her
+unhappiness that since her broken engagement no one would ever allude to him,
+and she longed to hear him mentioned, so that perchance she could get some
+inkling of his movements.
+
+"I met Stephen tonight for the first time in a week," said Mr. Wiley. "He kind
+o' keeps out o' my way lately. He's goin' to drive his span into Portland
+tomorrow mornin' and bring Rufus home from the hospital Sunday afternoon. The
+doctors think they've made a success of their job, but Rufus has got to be
+bandaged up a spell longer. Stephen is goin' to join the drive Monday mornin'
+at the bridge here, so I'll get the latest news o' the boy. Land! I'll be
+turrible glad if he gets out with his eyesight, if it's only for Steve's sake.
+He's a turrible good fellow, Steve is! He said something tonight that made me
+set more store by him than ever. I told you I hed n't heard an unkind word
+ag'in' Rose sence she come home from Boston, an' no more I hev till this
+evenin'. There was two or three fellers talkin' in the post-office, an' they
+did n't suspicion I was settin' on the steps outside the screen door. That Jim
+Jenkins, that Rose so everlastin'ly snubbed at the tavern dance, spoke up, an'
+says he: 'This time last year Rose Wiley could 'a' hed the choice of any man
+on the river, an' now I bet ye she can't get nary one.'
+
+"Steve was there, jest goin' out the door, with some bags o' coffee an' sugar
+under his arm.
+
+"'I guess you're mistaken about that,' he says, speakin' up jest like
+lightnin'; 'so long as Stephen Waterman's alive, Rose Wiley can have him, for
+one; and that everybody's welcome to know.'
+
+"He spoke right out, loud an' plain, jest as if he was readin' the Declaration
+of Independence. I expected the boys would everlastin'ly poke fun at him, but
+they never said a word. I guess his eyes flashed, for he come out the screen
+door, slammin' it after him, and stalked by me as if he was too worked up to
+notice anything or anybody. I did n't foller him, for his long legs git over
+the ground too fast for me, but thinks I, 'Mebbe I'll hev some use for my
+lemonade-set after all.'"
+
+"I hope to the land you will," responded Mrs. Wiley, "for I'm about sick o'
+movin' it round when I sweep under my bed. And I shall be glad if Rose an'
+Stephen do make it up, for Wealthy Ann Brooks's gossip is too much for a
+Christian woman to stand."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Housebreaking
+
+
+Where was the pale Rose, the faded Rose, that crept noiselessly down from her
+room, wanting neither to speak nor to be spoken to? Nobody ever knew. She
+vanished forever, and in her place a thing of sparkles and dimples flashed up
+the stairway and closed the door softly. There was a streak of moon-shine
+lying across the bare floor, and a merry ghost, with dressing-gown held
+prettily away from bare feet, danced a gay fandango among the yellow
+moonbeams. There were breathless flights to the open window, and kisses thrown
+in the direction of the River Farm. There were impressive declamations at the
+looking-glass, where a radiant creature pointed to her reflection and
+whispered, "Worthless little pig, he loves you, after all!"
+
+Then, when quiet joy had taken the place of mad delight, there was a swoop
+down upon the floor, an impetuous hiding of brimming eyes in the white
+counterpane, and a dozen impassioned promises to herself and to something
+higher than herself, to be a better girl.
+
+The mood lasted, and deepened, and still Rose did not move. Her heart was on
+its knees before Stephen's faithful love, his chivalry, his strength. Her
+troubled spirit, like a frail boat tossed about in the rapids, seemed entering
+a quiet harbor, where there were protecting shores and a still, still evening
+star. Her sails were all torn and drooping, but the harbor was in sight, and
+the poor little weather-beaten craft could rest in peace.
+
+A period of grave reflection now ensued, under the bedclothes, where one could
+think better. Suddenly an inspiration seized her, an inspiration so original,
+so delicious, and above all so humble and praiseworthy, that it brought her
+head from her pillow, and she sat bolt upright, clapping her hands like a
+child.
+
+"The very thing!" she whispered to herself gleefully. "It will take courage,
+but I'm sure of my ground after what he said before them all, and I'll do it.
+Grandma in Biddeford buying church carpets, Stephen in Portland--was ever such
+a chance?"
+
+The same glowing Rose came downstairs, two steps at a time, next morning, bade
+her grandmother goodbye with suspicious pleasure, and sent her grandfather
+away on an errand which, with attendant conversation, would consume half the
+day. Then bundles after bundles and baskets after baskets were packed into the
+wagon,--behind the seat, beneath the seat, and finally under the lap-robe. She
+gave a dramatic flourish to the whip, drove across the bridge, went through
+Pleasant River village, and up the leafy road to the little house, stared the
+"To Let" sign scornfully in the eye, alighted, and ran like a deer through the
+aisles of waving corn, past the kitchen windows, to the back door.
+
+"If he has kept the big key in the old place under the stone, where we both
+used to find it, then he has n't forgotten me--or anything," thought Rose.
+
+The key was there, and Rose lifted it with a sob of gratitude. It was but five
+minutes' work to carry all the bundles from the wagon to the back steps, and
+another five to lead old Tom across the road into the woods and tie him to a
+tree quite out of the sight of any passer-by.
+
+When, after running back, she turned the key in the lock, her heart gave a
+leap almost of terror, and she started at the sound of her own footfall.
+Through the open door the sunlight streamed into the dark room. She flew to
+tables and chairs, and gave a rapid sweep of the hand over their surfaces.
+
+"He has been dusting here,--and within a few days, too," she thought
+triumphantly.
+
+The kitchen was perfection, as she always knew it would be, with one door
+opening to the shaded road and the other looking on the river; windows, too,
+framing the apple-orchard and the elms. She had chosen the furniture, but how
+differently it looked now that it was actually in place! The tiny shed had
+piles of split wood, with great boxes of kindlings and shavings, all in
+readiness for the bride, who would do her own cooking. Who but Stephen would
+have made the very wood ready for a woman's home-coming; and why had he done
+so much in May, when they were not to be married until August? Then the door
+of the bedroom was stealthily opened, and here Rose sat down and cried for joy
+and shame and hope and fear. The very flowered paper she had refused as too
+expensive! How lovely it looked with the white chamber set! She brought in her
+simple wedding outfit of blankets, bed-linen, and counterpanes, and folded
+them softly in the closet; and then for the rest of the morning she went from
+room to room, doing all that could remain undiscovered, even to laying a fire
+in the new kitchen stove.
+
+This was the plan. Stephen must pass the house on his way from the River Farm
+to the bridge, where he was to join the river-drivers on Monday morning. She
+would be out of bed by the earliest peep of dawn, put on Stephen's favorite
+pink calico, leave a note for her grandmother, run like a hare down her side
+of the river and up Stephen's, steal into the house, open blinds and windows,
+light the fire, and set the kettle boiling. Then with a sharp knife she would
+cut down two rows of corn, and thus make a green pathway from the front
+kitchen steps to the road. Next, the false and insulting "To Let" sign would
+be forcibly tweaked from the tree and thrown into the grass. She would then
+lay the table in the kitchen, and make ready the nicest breakfast that two
+people ever sat down to. And oh, would two people sit down to it; or would one
+go off in a rage and the other die of grief and disappointment?
+
+Then, having done all, she would wait and palpitate, and palpitate and wait,
+until Stephen came. Surely no property-owner in the universe could drive along
+a road, observe his corn leveled to the earth, his sign removed, his house
+open, and smoke issuing from his chimney, without going in to surprise the
+rogue and villain who could be guilty of such vandalism.
+
+And when he came in?
+
+Oh, she had all day Sunday in which to forecast, with mingled dread and
+gladness and suspense, that all-important, all-decisive first moment! All day
+Sunday to frame and unframe penitent speeches. All day Sunday! Would it ever
+be Monday? If so, what would Tuesday bring? Would the sun rise happy on Mrs.
+Stephen Waterman of Pleasant River, or miserable Miss Rose Wiley of the Brier
+Neighborhood?
+
+
+
+ 
+XV
+
+The Dream Room
+
+
+Long ago, when Stephen was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, he had gone with his
+father to a distant town to spend the night. After an early breakfast next
+morning his father had driven off for a business interview, and left the boy
+to walk about during his absence. He wandered aimlessly along a quiet side
+street, and threw himself down on the grass outside a pretty garden to amuse
+himself as best he could.
+
+After a few minutes he heard voices, and, turning, peeped through the bars of
+the gate in idle, boyish curiosity. It was a small brown house; the kitchen
+door was open, and a table spread with a white cloth was set in the middle of
+the room. There was a cradle in a far corner, and a man was seated at the
+table as though he might be waiting for his breakfast.
+
+There is a kind of sentiment about the kitchen in New England, a kind of
+sentiment not provoked by other rooms. Here the farmer drops in to spend a few
+minutes when he comes back from the barn or field on an errand. Here, in the
+great, clean, sweet, comfortable place, the busy housewife lives, sometimes
+rocking the cradle, sometimes opening and shutting the oven door, sometimes
+stirring the pot, darning stockings, paring vegetables, or mixing goodies in a
+yellow bowl. The children sit on the steps, stringing beans, shelling peas, or
+hulling berries; the cat sleeps on the floor near the wood-box; and the
+visitor feels exiled if he stays in sitting-room or parlor, for here, where
+the mother is always busy, is the heart of the farmhouse.
+
+There was an open back door to this kitchen, a door framed in morning-glories,
+and the woman (or was she only girl?) standing at the stove was pretty,--oh,
+so pretty in Stephen's eyes! His boyish heart went out to her on the instant.
+She poured a cup of coffee and walked with it to the table; then an
+unexpected, interesting thing happened--something the boy ought not to have
+seen, and never forgot. The man, putting out his hand to take the cup, looked
+up at the pretty woman with a smile, and she stooped and kissed him.
+
+Stephen was fifteen. As he looked, on the instant he became a man, with a
+man's hopes, desires, ambitions. He looked eagerly, hungrily, and the scene
+burned itself on the sensitive plate of his young heart, so that, as he grew
+older, he could take the picture out in the dark, from time to time, and look
+at it again. When he first met Rose, he did not know precisely what she was to
+mean to him; but before long, when he closed his eyes and the old familiar
+picture swam into his field of vision, behold, by some spiritual chemistry,
+the pretty woman's face had given place to that of Rose!
+
+All such teasing visions had been sternly banished during this sorrowful
+summer, and it was a thoughtful, sober Stephen who drove along the road on
+this mellow August morning. The dust was deep; the goldenrod waved its
+imperial plumes, making the humble waysides gorgeous; the river chattered and
+sparkled till it met the logs at the Brier Neighborhood, and then, lapsing
+into silence, flowed steadily under them till it found a vent for its spirits
+in the dashing and splashing of the falls.
+
+Haying was over; logging was to begin that day; then harvesting; then wood-
+cutting; then eternal successions of ploughing, sowing, reaping, haying,
+logging, harvesting, and so on, to the endless end of his days. Here and there
+a red or a yellow branch, painted only yesterday, caught his eye and made him
+shiver. He was not ready for winter; his heart still craved the summer it had
+missed.
+
+Hello! What was that? Corn-stalks prone on the earth? Sign torn down and lying
+flat in the grass? Blinds open, fire in the chimney?
+
+He leaped from the wagon, and, flinging the reins to Alcestis Crambry, said,
+"Stay right here out of sight, and don't you move till I call you!" And
+striding up the green pathway, he flung open the kitchen door.
+
+A forest of corn waving in the doorway at the back, morning-glories clambering
+round and round the window-frames, the table with shining white cloth, the
+kettle humming and steaming, something bubbling in a pan on the stove, the
+fire throwing out sweet little gleams of welcome through the open damper. All
+this was taken in with one incredulous, rapturous twinkle of an eye; but
+something else, too: Rose of all roses, Rose of the river, Rose of the world,
+standing behind a chair, with her hand pressed against her heart, her lips
+parted, her breath coming and going! She was glowing like a jewel--glowing
+with the extraordinary brilliancy that emotion gives to some women. She used
+to be happy in a gay, sparkling way, like the shallow part of the stream as it
+chatters over white pebbles and bright sands. Now it was a broad, steady, full
+happiness like the deeps of the river under the sun.
+
+"Don't speak, Stephen, till you hear what I have to say. It takes a good deal
+of courage for a girl to do as I am doing; but I want to show how sorry I am,
+and it's the only way." She was trembling, and the words came faster and
+faster. "I've been very wrong and foolish, and made you very unhappy, but I
+have n't done what you would have hated most. I have n't been engaged to
+Claude Merrill; he has n't so much as asked me. I am here to beg you to
+forgive me, to eat breakfast with me, to drive me to the minister's and marry
+me quickly, quickly, before anything happens to prevent us, and then to bring
+me home here to live all the days of my life. Oh, Stephen dear, honestly,
+honestly, you have n't lost anything in all this long, miserable summer. I've
+suffered, too, and I'm better worth loving than I was. Will you take me back?"
+
+Rose had a tremendous power of provoking and holding love, and Stephen of
+loving. His was too generous a nature for revilings and complaints and
+reproaches.
+
+The shores of his heart were strewn with the wreckage of the troubled summer,
+but if the tide of love is high enough, it washes such things out of
+remembrance. He just opened his arms and took Rose to his heart, faults and
+all, with joy and gratitude; and she was as happy as a child who has escaped
+the scolding it richly deserves, and who determines, for very thankfulness'
+sake, never to be naughty again.
+
+"You don't know what you've done for me, Stephen," she whispered, with her
+face hidden on his shoulder. "I was just a common little prickly rosebush when
+you came along like a good gardener and 'grafted in' something better; the
+something better was your love, Stephen dear, and it's made everything
+different. The silly Rose you were engaged to long ago has disappeared
+somewhere; I hope you won't be able to find her under the new leaves."
+
+"She was all I wanted," said Stephen.
+
+"You thought she was," the girl answered, "because you did n't see the
+prickles, but you'd have felt them some time. The old Rose was a selfish
+thing, not good enough for you; the new Rose is going to be your wife, and
+Rufus's sister, and your mother's daughter, all in one."
+
+Then such a breakfast was spread as Stephen, in his sorry years of bachelor
+existence, had forgotten could exist; but before he broke his fast he ran out
+to the wagon and served the astonished Alcestis with his wedding refreshments
+then and there, bidding him drive back to the River Farm and bring him a
+package that lay in the drawer of his shaving-stand,--a package placed there
+when hot youth and love and longing had inspired him to hurry on the marriage
+day.
+
+"There's an envelope, Alcestis," he cried, "a long envelope, way, way back in
+the corner, and a small box on top of it. Bring them both and my wallet too,
+and if you find them all and get them to me safely you shall be bridesmaid and
+groomsman and best man and usher and maid of honor at a wedding, in less than
+an hour! Off with you! Drive straight and use the whip on Dolly!"
+
+When he re-entered the kitchen, flushed with joy and excitement, Rose put the
+various good things on the table and he almost tremblingly took his seat,
+fearing that contact with the solid wood might wake him from this entrancing
+vision.
+
+"I'd like to put you in your chair like a queen and wait on you," he said with
+a soft boyish stammer; "but I am too dazed with happiness to be of any use."
+
+"It's my turn to wait upon you, and I--Oh! how I love to have you dazed," Rose
+answered. "I'll be at the table presently myself; but we have been
+housekeeping only three minutes, and we have nothing but the tin coffee-pot
+this morning, so I'll pour the coffee from the stove."
+
+She filled a cup with housewifely care and brought it to Stephen's side. As
+she set it down and was turning, she caught his look,--a look so full of
+longing that no loving woman, however busy, could have resisted it; then she
+stooped and kissed him fondly, fervently.
+
+Stephen put his arm about her, and, drawing her down to his knee, rested his
+head against her soft shoulder with a sigh of comfort, like that of a tired
+child. He had waited for it ten years, and at last the dream room had come
+true.
+
+ 
+
+
+
+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 grave-stones in the old
+churchyard, and underneath almost every moss-grown tablet some humble romance
+lies buried aud 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 sprig of "rosemary,
+that's for remembrance."
+
+K. D. W.
+
+August, 1907
+
+
+
+
+The Old Peabody Pew
+
+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 neighbor 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 honor; some, seeking better fortunes, have
+gone westward; others, wearying of village life, the rocky soil, and rigors 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 labors, 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
+inaking 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 did n't
+intend to sit through meeting on winter Sundays, with her white ostrich
+feather turning gray 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 waterproofing were discussed in and out of season, and the very
+school-children imbibed knowledge concerning lapping, over-lapping, 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 were conscientiously
+and skillfully 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 "menfolks"
+would n'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 neighboring 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 neighboring 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 folks' concerts, apron sales, and, as a last
+resort, a subscription paper, for the church floor measured hundreds of square
+yards, and the carpet committee announced 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 :--
+
+"Would n'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 did n'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 seem 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 should n'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 neighbors', 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 favor
+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.
+
+
+
+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 washcloth 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 has n't been occupied since I came here," said the minister's
+wife.
+
+"No," answered Mrs. Sargent, glad of any opportunity to retail neighborhood
+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 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 would n'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 labors. "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 't was 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 crape
+shawl and a palmleaf 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 should n'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 are n'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 neighborhood.
+
+"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.
+
+"Has n'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 neighbors 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 should n'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 favors. I used to
+think Tom was poor comp'ny and complain I could n'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."
+
+
+
+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 when 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 neighbors.
+
+"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 favor his neighbors, 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 o' 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 qualification 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 gray carpet-thread; thread as gray as her own
+life.
+
+The scrubbing-party had moved to its labors 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 goodbye to his neighbors, 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 halfway down the
+garden path, where the shriveled 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, wellnigh 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 neighbors 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 neighborhood. The endless months had gone
+on since that gray November day when Justin had said goodbye. 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
+neighbors told him, she was a great favorite 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.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+It was Saturday afternoon, the 24th 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 Grays 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 is n'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 a 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 tomorrow. 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 have n'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 favorable 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 tonight 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 x2.
+
+She had taken her Bible to look out the reference and found it to be:--
+
+  Having many tilings 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 sipgle
+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, marveling 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
+neighbors; 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.
+
+
+
+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 honorable
+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 had n't it on his conscience
+that _he_ had kept her single!
+
+On the 17th 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 rigors 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 neighbors, in the service at the meetinghouse; 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 somber 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.
+
+
+
+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 neighbors, 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 odors. 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 Heartsease 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 practiced 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 sun-shades, in his mind's eye,
+as he closed the outer door behind him and gently opened the inner one. The
+church was flooded with moon-light 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 honor 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 land-marks, 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 gray dress was turned up in front
+over a crimson moreen petticoat. She had on a cozy jacket, a fur turban of
+some sort with a red breast 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 labors 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.
+
+
+
+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 halfway 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 labor 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 could n'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 hair-cloth sofa in the
+Wentworth parlor 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 was n't sure that you really cared
+anything about me; and how could I have asked you when I had n'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 gray 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
+would n'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.
+
+"O Justin, Justin! there's something wrong somewhere," she whispered, "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 is n'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 tomorrow 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 should n'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 have n't forgotten yet how
+interested the Brewsters are in their neighbors."
+
+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 tonight, 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 goodnight.
+
+
+ 
+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 grand-child
+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 goodwill, 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.
+
+Justin's identity had dawned upon most of the congregation by sermon time. 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
+neighbors 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 needs 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 had n'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 should n't wonder a mite but they
+prospered and come back every summer to set in the Old Peabody Pew."
+
+
+
+
+
+SUSANNA AND SUE
+
+
+I
+
+Mother Ann's Children
+
+
+It was the end of May, when "spring goeth all in white." The apple trees were
+scattering their delicate petals on the ground, dropping them over the stone
+walls to the roadsides, where in the moist places of the shadows they fell on
+beds of snowy innocence. Here and there a single tree was tinged with pink,
+but so faintly, it was as if the white were blushing. Now and then a tiny
+white butterfly danced in the sun and pearly clouds strayed across the sky in
+fleecy flocks.
+
+Everywhere the grass was of ethereal greenness, a greenness drenched with the
+pale yellow of spring sunshine. Looking from earth to sky and from blossom to
+blossom, the little world of the apple orchards, shedding its falling petals
+like fair-weather snow, seemed made of alabaster and porcelain, ivory and
+mother-of-pearl, all shimmering on a background of tender green.
+
+After you pass Albion village, with its streets shaded by elms and maples and
+its outskirts embowered in blossoming orchards, you wind along a hilly country
+road that runs between grassy fields. Here the whiteweed is already budding,
+and there are pleasant pastures dotted with rocks and fringed with spruce and
+fir; stretches of woodland, too, where the road is lined with giant pines and
+you lift your face gratefully to catch the cool balsam breath of the forest.
+Coming from out this splendid shade, this silence too deep to be disturbed by
+light breezes or vagrant winds, you find yourself on the brow of a descending
+hill. The first thing that strikes the eye is a lake that might be a great
+blue sapphire dropped into the verdant hollow where it lies. When the eye
+reluctantly leaves the lake on the left, it turns to rest upon the little
+Shaker Settlement on the right--a dozen or so large comfortable white barns,
+sheds, and houses, standing in the wide orderly spaces of their own spreading
+acres of farm and timber land. There again the spring goeth all in white, for
+there is no spot to fleck the dazzling quality of Shaker paint, and their
+apple, plum, and pear trees are so well cared for that the snowy blossoms are
+fairly hiding the branches.
+
+The place is very still, although there are signs of labor in all directions.
+From a window of the girls' building a quaint little gray-clad figure is
+beating a braided rug; a boy in homespun, with his hair slightly long in the
+back and cut in a straight line across the forehead, is carrying milk-cans
+from the dairy to one of the Sisters' Houses. Men in broad-brimmed hats, with
+clean-shaven, ascetic faces, are ploughing or harrowing here and there in the
+fields, while a group of Sisters is busy setting out plants and vines in some
+beds near a cluster of noble trees. That cluster of trees, did the eye of the
+stranger realize it, was the very starting-point of this Shaker Community, for
+in the year 1785, the valiant Father James Whittaker, one of Mother Ann Lee's
+earliest English converts, stopped near the village of Albion on his first
+visit to Maine. As he and his Elders alighted from their horses, they stuck
+into the ground the willow withes they had used as whips, and now, a hundred
+years later, the trees that had grown from these slender branches were nearly
+three feet in diameter.
+
+From whatever angle you look upon the Settlement, the first and strongest
+impression is of quiet order, harmony, and a kind of austere plenty. Nowhere
+is the purity of the spring so apparent. Nothing is out of place; nowhere is
+any confusion, or appearance of loose ends, or neglected tasks. As you come
+nearer, you feel the more surely that here there has never been undue haste
+nor waste; no shirking, no putting off till the morrow what should have been
+done today. Whenever a shingle or a clapboard was needed it was put on, where
+paint was required it was used,--that is evident; and a look at the great
+barns stored with hay shows how the fields have been conscientiously educated
+into giving a full crop.
+
+To such a spot as this might any tired or sinful heart come for rest; hoping
+somehow, in the midst of such frugality and thrift, such self-denying labor,
+such temperate use of God's good gifts, such shining cleanliness of outward
+things, to regain and wear "the white flower of a blameless life." The very
+air of the place breathed peace, so thought Susanna Hathaway; and little Sue,
+who skipped by her side, thought nothing at all save that she was with mother
+in the country; that it had been rather a sad journey, with mother so quiet
+and pale, and that she would be very glad to see supper, should it rise like a
+fairy banquet in the midst of these strange surroundings.
+
+It was only a mile and a half from the railway station to the Shaker
+Settlement, and Susanna knew the road well, for she had driven over it more
+than once as child and girl. A boy would bring the little trunk that contained
+their simple necessities later on in the evening, so she and Sue would knock
+at the door of the house where visitors were admitted, and be undisturbed by
+any gossiping company while they were pleading their case.
+
+"Are we most there, Mardie?" asked Sue for the twentieth time. "Look at me!
+I'm being a butterfly, or perhaps a white pigeon. No, I'd rather be a
+butterfly, and then I can skim along faster and move my wings!"
+
+The airy little figure, all lightness and brightness, danced along the road,
+the white cotton dress rising and falling, the white-stockinged legs much in
+evidence, the arms outstretched as if in flight, straw hat falling off yellow
+hair, and a little wisp of swansdown scarf floating out behind like the
+drapery of a baby Mercury.
+
+"We are almost there," her mother answered. "You can see the buildings now, if
+you will stop being a butterfly. Don't you like them?"
+
+"Yes, I 'specially like them all so white. Is it a town, Mardie?"
+
+"It is a village, but not quite like other villages. I have told you often
+about the Shaker Settlement, where your grandmother brought me once when I was
+just your age. There was a thunder-storm; they kept us all night, and were so
+kind that I never forgot them. Then your grandmother and I stopped off once
+when we were going to Boston. I was ten then, and I remember more about it.
+The same sweet Eldress was there both times."
+
+"What is an El-der-ess, Mardie?"
+
+"A kind of everybody's mother, she seemed to be," Susanna responded, with a
+catch in her breath.
+
+"I'd 'specially like her; will she be there now, Mardie?"
+
+"I'm hoping so, but it is eighteen years ago. I was ten and she was about
+forty, I should think."
+
+"Then o' course she'll be dead," said Sue, cheerfully, "or either she'll have
+no teeth or hair."
+
+"People don't always die before they are sixty, Sue."
+
+"Do they die when they want to, or when they must?"
+
+"Always when they must; never, never when they want to," answered Sue's
+mother.
+
+"But o' course they would n't ever want to if they had any little girls to be
+togedder with, like you and me, Mardie?" And Sue looked up with eyes that were
+always like two interrogation points, eager by turns and by turns wistful, but
+never satisfied.
+
+"No," Susanna replied brokenly, "of course they would n't, unless sometimes
+they were wicked for a minute or two and forgot."
+
+"Do the Shakers shake all the time, Mardie, or just once in a while? And shall
+I see them do it?"
+
+"Sue, dear, I can't explain everything in the world to you while you are so
+little; you really must wait until you're more grown up. The Shakers don't
+shake and the Quakers don't quake, and when you're older, I'll try to make you
+understand why they were called so and why they kept the name."
+
+"Maybe the El-der-ess can make me understand right off now; I'd 'specially
+like it." And Sue ran breathlessly along to the gate where the North Family
+House stood in its stately, white-and-green austerity.
+
+Susanna followed, and as she caught up with the impetuous Sue, the front door
+of the house opened and a figure appeared on the threshold. Mother and child
+quickened their pace and went up the steps, Susanna with a hopeless burden of
+fear and embarrassment clogging her tongue and dragging at her feet; Sue so
+expectant of new disclosures and fresh experiences that her face beamed like a
+full moon.
+
+Eldress Abby (for it was Eldress Abby) had indeed survived the heavy weight of
+her fifty-five or sixty summers, and looked as if she might reach a yet
+greater age. She wore the simple Shaker afternoon dress of drab alpaca; an
+irreproachable muslin surplice encircled her straight, spare shoulders, while
+her hair was almost entirely concealed by the stiffly wired, transparent
+white-net cap that served as a frame to the tranquil face. The face itself was 
+a network of delicate, fine wrinkles; but every wrinkle must have been as
+lovely in God's sight as it was in poor unhappy Susanna Hathaway's. Some of
+them were graven by self-denial and hard work; others perhaps meant the giving
+up of home, of parents and brothers or sisters; perhaps some worldly love, the
+love that Father Adam bequeathed to the human family, had been slain in Abby's
+youth, and the scars still remained to show the body's suffering and the
+spirit's triumph. At all events, whatever foes had menaced her purity or her
+tranquillity had been conquered, and she exhaled serenity as the rose sheds
+fragrance.
+
+"Do you remember the little Nelson girl and her mother that stayed here all
+night, years ago?" asked Susanna, putting out her hand timidly.
+
+"Why, seems to me I do," assented Eldress Abby, genially. "So many comes and
+goes it's hard to remember all. Did n't you come once in a thunder-storm?"
+
+"Yes, one of your barns was struck by lightning and we sat up all night."
+"Yee, yee.(1) I remember well! Your mother was a beautiful spirit. I could n't
+forget her."
+
+(1)"Yea" is always thus pronounced by the Shakers.
+
+"And we came once again, mother and I, and spent the afternoon with you, and
+went strawberrying in the pasture."
+
+"Yee, yee, so we did; I hope your mother continues in health."
+
+"She died the very next year," Susanna answered in a trembling voice, for the
+time of explanation was near at hand and her heart failed her.
+
+"Won't you come into the sittingroom and rest a while? You must be tired
+walking from the deepot."
+
+"No, thank you, not just yet. I'll step into the front entry a minute.--Sue,
+run and sit in that rocking-chair on the porch and watch the cows going into
+the big barn.--Do you remember, Eldress Abby, the second time I came, how you
+sat me down in the kitchen with a bowl of wild strawberries to hull for
+supper? They were very small and ripe; I did my best, for I never meant to be
+careless, but the bowl slipped and fell, my legs were too short to reach the
+floor, and I could n't make a lap, so in trying to pick up the berries I
+spilled juice on nay dress, and on the white apron you had tied on for me.
+Then my fingers were stained and wet and the hulls kept falling in with the
+soft berries, and when you came in and saw me you held up your hands and said,
+'Dear, dear! you _have_ made a mess of your work!' Oh, Eldress Abby, they've
+come back to me all day, those words. I've tried hard to be good, but somehow
+I've made just such a mess of my life as I made of hulling the berries. The
+bowl is broken, I have n't much fruit to show, and I am all stained and
+draggled. I should n't have come to Albion on the five o'clock train--that was
+an accident; I meant to come at noon, when you could turn me away if you
+wanted to."
+
+"Nay, that is not the Shaker habit," remonstrated Abby. "You and the child can
+sleep in one of the spare chambers at the Office Building and be welcome."
+
+"But I want much more than that," said Susanna, tearfully. "I want to come and
+live here, where there is no marrying nor giving in marriage. I am so tired
+with my disappointments and discouragements and failures that it is no use to
+try any longer. I am Mrs. Hathaway, and Sue is my child, but I have left my
+husband for good and all, and I only want to spend the rest of my days here in
+peace and bring up Sue to a more tranquil life than I have ever had. I have a
+little money, so that I shall not be a burden to you, and I will work from
+morning to night at any task you set me."
+
+"I will talk to the Family," said Eldress Abby gravely; "but there are a good
+many things to settle before we can say yee to all you ask."
+
+"Let me confess everything freely and fully," pleaded Susanna, "and if you
+think I'm to blame, I will go away at once."
+
+"Nay, this is no time for that. It is our duty to receive all and try all;
+then if you should be gathered in, you would unburden your heart to God
+through the Sister appointed to receive your confession."
+
+"Will Sue have to sleep in the children's building away from me?"
+
+"Nay, not now; you are company, not a Shaker, and anyway you could keep the
+child with you till she is a little older; that's not forbidden at first,
+though there comes a time when the ties of the flesh must be broken! All
+you've got to do now's to be 'pure and peaceable, gentle, easy to be
+entreated, and without hypocrisy.' That's about all there is to the Shaker
+creed, and that's enough to keep us all busy."
+
+Sue ran in from the porch excitedly and caught her mother's hand.
+
+"The cows have all gone into the barn," she chattered; "and the Shaker
+gentlemen are milking them, and not one of them is shaking the least bit, for
+I 'specially noticed; and I looked in through the porch window, and there is
+nice supper on a table--bread and butter and milk and dried apple sauce and
+gingerbread and cottage cheese. Is it for us, Mardie?"
+
+Susanna's lip was trembling and her face was pale. She lifted her swimming
+eyes to the Sister's and asked, "Is it for us, Eldress Abby?"
+
+"Yee, it's for you," she answered; "there's always a Shaker supper on the
+table for all who want to leave the husks and share the feast. Come right in
+and help yourselves. I will sit down with you."
+
+
+Supper was over, and Susanna and Sue were lying in a little upper chamber
+under the stars. It was the very one that Susanna had slept in as a child, or
+that she had been put to bed in, for there was little sleep that night for any
+one. She had leaned on the windowsill with her mother and watched the pillar
+of flame and smoke ascend from the burning barn; and once in the early morning
+she had stolen out of bed, and, kneeling by the open window, had watched the
+two silent Shaker brothers who were guarding the smouldering ruins, fearful
+lest the wind should rise and bear any spark to the roofs of the precious
+buildings they had labored so hard to save.
+
+The chamber was spotless and devoid of ornament. The paint was robin's egg
+blue and of a satin gloss. The shining floor was of the same color, and neat
+braided rugs covered exposed places near the bureau, washstand, and bed.
+Various useful articles of Shaker manufacture interested Sue greatly: the
+exquisite straw-work that covered the whisk-broom; the mending-basket,
+pincushion, needle-book, spool- and watch-cases, hair-receivers, pin-trays,
+might all have been put together by fairy fingers.
+
+Sue's prayers had been fervent, but a trifle disjointed, covering all subjects
+from Jack and Fardie, to Grandma in heaven and Aunt Louisa at the farm, with
+special references to El-der-ess Abby and the Shaker cows, and petitions that
+the next day be fair so that she could see them milked. Excitement at her
+strange, unaccustomed surroundings had put the child's mind in a very whirl,
+and she had astonished her mother with a very new and disturbing version of
+the Lord's Prayer, ending: "God give us our debts and help us to forget our
+debtors and theirs shall be the glory, Amen." Now she lay quietly on the wall
+side of the clean, narrow bed, while her mother listened to hear the regular
+breathing that would mean that she was off for the land of dreams. The child's
+sleep would leave the mother free to slip out of bed and look at the stars;
+free to pray and long and wonder and suffer and repent, not wholly, but in
+part, for she was really at peace in all but the innermost citadel of her
+conscience. She had left her husband, and for the moment, at all events, she
+was fiercely glad; but she had left her boy, and Jack was only ten. Jack was
+not the helpless, clinging sort; he was a little piece of his father, and his
+favorite. Aunt Louisa would surely take him, and Jack would scarcely feel the
+difference, for he had never shown any special affection for anybody. Still he
+was her child, nobody could possibly get around that fact, and it was a
+stumbling-block in the way of forgetfulness or ease of mind. Oh, but for that,
+what unspeakable content she could feel in this quiet haven, this self-
+respecting solitude! To have her thoughts, her emotions, her words, her self,
+to herself once more, as she had had them before she was married at seventeen.
+To go to sleep in peace, without listening for a step she had once heard with
+gladness, but that now sometimes stumbled unsteadily on the stair; or to dream
+as happy women dreamed, without being roused by the voice of the present John,
+a voice so different from that of the past John that it made the heart ache to
+listen to it.
+
+Sue's voice broke the stillness: "How long are we going to stay here, Mardie?"
+
+"I don't know, Sue; I think perhaps as long as they'll let us."
+
+"Will Fardie come and see us?"
+
+"I don't expect him."
+
+"Who'll take care of Jack, Mardie?"
+
+"Your Aunt Louisa."
+
+"She'll scold him awfully, but he never cries; he just says, 'Pooh! what do I
+care?' Oh, I forgot to pray for that very nicest Shaker gentleman that said
+he'd let me help him feed the calves! Had n't I better get out of bed and do
+it? I'd 'specially like to."
+
+"Very well, Sue; and then go to sleep."
+
+Safely in bed again, there was a long pause, and then the eager little voice
+began, "Who'll take care of Fardie now?"
+
+"He's a big man; he does n't need anybody."
+
+"What if he's sick?"
+
+"We must go back to him, I suppose."
+
+" Tomorrow 's Sunday; what if he needs us tomorrow, Mardie?"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know! Oh, Sue, Sue, don't ask your wretched mother any
+more questions, for she cannot bear them tonight. Cuddle up close to her; love
+her and forgive her and help her to know what's right."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A Son of Adam
+
+When Susanna Nelson at seventeen married John Hathaway, she had the usual
+cogent reasons for so doing, with some rather more unusual ones added thereto.
+She was alone in the world, and her life with an uncle, her mother's only
+relative, was an unhappy one. No assistance in the household tasks that she
+had ever been able to render made her a welcome member of the family or kept
+her from feeling a burden, and she belonged no more to the little circle at
+seventeen than she did when she became a part of it at twelve. The hope of
+being independent and earning her own living had sustained her through the
+last year; but it was a very timid, self-distrustful, love-starved little
+heart that John Hathaway stormed and carried by assault. Her girl's life in a
+country school and her uncle's very rigid and orthodox home had been devoid of
+emotion or experience; still, her mother had early sown seeds in her mind and
+spirit that even in the most arid soil were certain to flower into beauty when
+the time for flowering came; and intellectually Susanna was the clever
+daughter of clever parents. She was very immature, because, after early
+childhood, her environment had not been favorable to her development. At
+seventeen she began to dream of a future as bright as the past had been dreary
+and uneventful. Visions of happiness, of goodness, and of service haunted her,
+and sometimes, gleaming through the mists of dawning womanhood, the figure,
+all luminous, of The Man!
+
+When John Hathaway appeared on the horizon, she promptly clothed him in all
+the beautiful garments of her dreams; they were a grotesque misfit, but when
+we intimate that women have confused the dream and the reality before, and may
+even do so again, we make the only possible excuse for poor little Susanna
+Nelson.
+
+John Hathaway was the very image of the outer world that lay beyond Susanna's
+village. He was a fairly prosperous, genial, handsome young merchant, who
+looked upon life as a place furnished by Providence in which to have "a good
+time." His parents had frequently told him that it was expedient for him to
+"settle down," and he supposed that he might finally do so, if he should ever
+find a girl who would tempt him to relinquish his liberty. (The line that
+divides liberty and license was a little vague to John Hathaway!) It is
+curious that he should not have chosen for his life-partner some thoughtless,
+rosy, romping young person, whose highest conception of connubial happiness
+would have been to drive twenty miles to the seashore on a Sunday, and having
+partaken of all the season's delicacies, solid and liquid, to come home
+hilarious by moonlight. That, however, is not the way the little love-imps do
+their work in the world; or is it possible that they are not imps at all who
+provoke and stimulate and arrange these strange marriages not imps, but
+honest, chastening little character-builders? In any event, the moment that
+John Hathaway first beheld Susanna Nelson was the moment of his surrender; yet
+the wooing was as incomprehensible as that of a fragile, dainty little
+hummingbird by a pompous, greedy, big-breasted robin.
+
+Susanna was like a New England anemone. Her face was oval in shape and as
+smooth and pale as a pearl. Her hair was dark, not very heavy, and as soft as
+a child's. Her lips were delicate and sensitive, her eyes a cool gray,--clear,
+steady, and shaded by darker lashes. When John Hathaway met her shy, maidenly
+glance and heard her pretty, dovelike voice, it is strange he did not see that
+there was a bit too much saint in her to make her a willing comrade of his
+gay, roistering life. But as a matter of fact, John Hathaway saw nothing at
+all; nothing but that Susanna Nelson was a lovely girl and he wanted her for
+his own. The type was one he had never met before, one that allured him by its
+mysteries and piqued him by its shy aloofness.
+
+John had "a way with him," a way that speedily won Susanna; and after all
+there was a best to him as well as a worst. He had a twinkling eye, an
+infectious laugh, a sweet disposition, and while he was over-susceptible to
+the charm of a pretty face, he had a chivalrous admiration for all women,
+coupled, it must be confessed, with a decided lack of discrimination in
+values. His boyish lightheartedness had a charm for everybody, including
+Susanna; a charm that lasted until she discovered that his heart was light not
+only when it ought to be light, but when it ought to be heavy. He was very
+much in love with her, but there was nothing particularly exclusive, unique,
+individual, or interesting about his passion at that time. It was of the
+everyday sort which carries a well-meaning man to the altar, and sometimes, in
+cases of exceptional fervor and duration, even a little farther. Stock sizes
+of this article are common and inexpensive, and John Hathaway's love when he
+married Susanna was, judged by the highest standards, about as trivial an
+affair as Cupid ever put upon the market or a man ever offered to a woman.
+Susanna on the same day offered John, or the wooden idol she was worshiping as
+John, her whole self--mind, body, heart, and spirit. So the couple were
+united, and smilingly signed the marriage-register, a rite by which their love
+for each other was supposed to be made eternal.
+  "Will you love me?" said he.
+  "Will you love me?" said she.
+  Then they answered together:
+  "Through foul and fair weather,
+  From sunrise to moonrise,
+  From moonrise to sunrise,
+  By heath and by harbour,
+  In orchard or arbour,
+  In the time of the rose,
+  In the time of the snows,
+  Through smoke and through smother
+  We'll love one another!"
+
+ Cinderella, when the lover-prince discovers her and fits the crystal slipper
+to her foot, makes short work of flinging away her rags; and in some such
+pretty, airy, unthinking way did Susanna fling aside the dullness,
+inhospitality, and ugliness of her uncle's home and depart in a cloud of glory
+on her wedding journey. She had been lonely, now she would have companionship.
+She had been of no consequence, now she would be queen of her own small
+domain. She had been last with everybody, now she would be first with one, at
+least. She had worked hard and received neither compensation nor gratitude;
+henceforward her service would be gladly rendered at an altar where votive
+offerings would not be taken as a matter of course. She was only a slip of a
+girl now; marriage and housewifely cares would make her a woman. Some time
+perhaps the last great experience of life would come to her, and then what a
+crown of joys would be hers,--love, husband, home, children! What a vision it
+was, and how soon the chief glory of it faded!
+
+Never were two beings more hopelessly unlike than John Hathaway single and
+John Hathaway married, but the bliss lasted a few years, nevertheless: partly
+because Susanna's charm was deep and penetrating, the sort to hold a false man
+for a time and a true man forever; partly because she tried, as a girl or
+woman has seldom tried before, to do her duty and to keep her own ideal
+unshattered.
+
+John had always been convivial, but Susanna at seventeen had been at once too
+innocent and too ignorant to judge a man's tendencies truly, or to rate his
+character at its real worth. As time went on, his earlier leanings grew more
+definite; he spent on pleasure far more than he could afford, and his conduct
+became a byword in the neighborhood. His boy he loved. He felt on a level with
+Jack, could understand him, play with him, punish him, and make friends with
+him; but little Sue was different. She always seemed to him the concentrated
+essence of her mother's soul, and when unhappy days came, he never looked in
+her radiant, searching eyes without a consciousness of inferiority. The little
+creature had loved her jolly, handsome, careless father at first, even though
+she feared him; but of late she had grown shy, silent, and timid, for his
+indifference chilled her and she flung herself upon her mother's love with an
+almost unchildlike intensity. This unhappy relation between the child and the
+father gave Susanna's heart new pangs. She still loved her husband, not
+dearly, but a good deal; and over and above that remnant of the old love which
+still endured she gave him unstinted care and hopeful maternal tenderness.
+
+The crash came in course of time. John transcended the bounds of his wife's
+patience more and more. She made her last protests; then she took one
+passionate day to make up her mind, a day when John and the boy were away
+together; a day of complete revolt against everything she was facing in the
+present, and, so far as she could see, everything that she had to face in the
+future. Prayer for light left her in darkness, and she had no human creature
+to advise her. Conscience was overthrown; she could see no duty save to her
+own outraged personality. Often and often during the year just past she had
+thought of the peace, the grateful solitude and shelter of that Shaker
+Settlement hidden among New England orchards; that quiet haven where there was
+neither marrying nor giving in marriage. Now her bruised heart longed for such
+a life of nunlike simplicity and consecration, where men and women met only as
+brothers and sisters, where they worked side by side with no thought of
+personal passion or personal gain, but only for the common good of the
+community.
+
+Albion village was less than three hours distant by train. She hastily
+gathered her plainest clothes and Sue's, packed them in a small trunk, took
+her mother's watch, her own little store of money and the twenty-dollar gold
+piece John's senior partner had given Sue on her last birthday, wrote a letter
+of goodbye to John, and went out of her cottage gate in a storm of feeling so
+tumultuous that there was no room for reflection. Besides, she had reflected,
+and reflected, for months and months, so she would have said, and the time had
+come for action. Susanna was not unlettered, but she certainly had never read
+Meredith or she would have learned that "love is an affair of two, and only
+for two that can be as quick, as constant in intercommunication as are sun and
+earth, through the cloud, or face to face. They take their breath of life from
+each other in signs of affection, proofs of faithfulness, incentives to
+admiration. But a solitary soul dragging a log must make the log a God to
+rejoice in the burden." The demigod that poor, blind Susanna married had
+vanished, and she could drag the log no longer, but she made one mistake in
+judging her husband, in that she regarded him, at thirty-two, as a finished
+product, a man who was finally this and that, and behaved thus and so, and
+would never be any different.
+
+The "age of discretion" is a movable feast of extraordinary uncertainty, and
+John Hathaway was a little behindhand in overtaking it. As a matter of fact,
+he had never for an instant looked life squarely in the face. He took a casual
+glance at it now and then, after he was married, but it presented no very
+distinguishable features, nothing to make him stop and think, nothing to
+arouse in him any special sense of responsibility. Boys have a way of "growing
+up," however, sooner or later, at least most of them have, and that
+possibility was not sufficiently in the foreground of Susanna's mind when she
+finished what she considered an exhaustive study of her husband's character.
+
+I am leaving you, John [she wrote], to see if I can keep the little love I
+have left for you as the father of my children. I seem to have lost all the
+rest of it living with you. I am not perfectly sure that I am right in going,
+for everybody seems to think that women, mothers especially, should bear
+anything rather than desert the home. I could not take Jack away, for you love
+him and he will be a comfort to you. A comfort to you, yes, but what will you
+be to him now that he is growing older? That is the thought that troubles me,
+yet I dare not take him with me when he is half yours. You will not miss me,
+nor will the loss of Sue make any difference. Oh, John! how can you help
+loving that blessed little creature, so much better and so much more gifted
+than either of us that we can only wonder how we came to be her father and
+mother? Your sin against her is greater than that against me, for at least you
+are not responsible for bringing me into the world. I know Louisa will take
+care of Jack, and she lives so near that you can see him as often as you wish.
+I shall let her know my address, which I have asked her to keep to herself.
+She will write to me if you or Jack should be seriously ill, but not for any
+other reason.
+
+As for you, there is nothing more that I can say except to confess freely that
+I was not the right wife for you and that mine was not the only mistake. I
+have tried my very best to meet you in everything that was not absolutely
+wrong, and I have used all the arguments I could think of, but it only made
+matters worse. I thought I knew you, John, in the old days. How comes it that
+we have traveled so far apart, we who began together? It seems to me that some
+time you must come to your senses and take up your life seriously, for this is
+not life, the sorry thing you have lived lately, but I cannot wait any longer!
+I am tired, tired, tired of waiting and hoping, too tired to do anything but
+drag myself away from the sight of your folly. You have wasted our children's
+substance, indulged your appetites until you have lost the respect of your
+best friends, and you have made me--who was your choice, your wife, the head
+of your house, the woman who brought your children into the world--you have
+made me an object of pity; a poor, neglected thing who could not meet her
+neighbors' eyes without blushing.
+
+When Jack and his father returned from their outing at eight o'clock in the
+evening, having had supper at a wayside hotel, the boy went to bed
+philosophically, lighting his lamp for himself, the conclusion being that the
+two other members of the household were a little late, but would be in
+presently.
+
+The next morning was bright and fair. Jack waked at cockcrow, and after
+calling to his mother and Sue, jumped out of bed, ran into their rooms to find
+them empty, then bounced down the stairs two at a time, going through the
+sitting-room on his way to find Ellen in the kitchen. His father was sitting
+at the table with the still-lighted student lamp on it; the table where
+lessons had been learned, books read, stories told, mending done, checkers and
+dominoes played; the big, round walnut table that was the focus of the family
+life--but mother's table, not father's.
+
+John Hathaway had never left his chair nor taken off his hat. His cane leaned
+against his knee, his gloves were in his left hand, while the right held
+Susanna's letter.
+
+He was asleep, although his lips twitched and he stirred uneasily. His face
+was haggard, and behind his closed lids, somewhere in the center of thought
+and memory, a train of fiery words burned in an ever-widening circle, round
+and round and round, ploughing, searing their way through some obscure part of
+him that had heretofore been without feeling, but was now all quick and alive
+with sensation.
+
+You have made me--who was your choice, your wife, the head of your house, the
+woman who brought your children into the world--you have made me an object of
+pity; a poor, neglected thing who could not meet her neighbors' eyes without
+blushing.
+
+Any one who wished to pierce John Hathaway's armor at that period of his life
+would have had to use a very sharp and pointed arrow, for he was well wadded
+with the belief that a man has a right to do what he likes. Susanna's shaft
+was tipped with truth and dipped in the blood of her outraged heart. The
+stored-up force of silent years went into the speeding of it. She had never
+shot an arrow before, and her skill was instinctive rather than scientific,
+but the powers were on her side and she aimed better than she knew--those who
+took note of John Hathaway's behavior that summer would have testified
+willingly to that. It was the summer in which his boyish irresponsibility
+slipped away from him once and for all; a summer in which the face of life
+ceased to be an indistinguishable mass of meaningless events and disclosed an
+order, a reason, a purpose hitherto unseen and undefined. The boy "grew up,"
+rather tardily it must be confessed. His soul had not added a cubit to its
+stature in sunshine, gayety, and prosperity; it took the shock of grief, hurt
+pride, solitude, and remorse to make a man of John Hathaway.
+
+
+ 
+
+III
+
+Divers Doctrines
+
+
+It was a radiant July morning in Albion village, and when Sue first beheld it
+from the bedroom window at the Shaker Settlement, she had wished ardently that
+it might never, never grow dark, and that Jack and Fardie might be having the
+very same sunshine in Farnham. It was not noon yet, but experience had in some
+way tempered the completeness of her joy, for the marks of tears were on her
+pretty little face. She had neither been scolded nor punished, but she had
+been dragged away from a delicious play without any adequate reason. She had
+disappeared after breakfast, while Susanna was helping Sister Tabitha with the
+beds and the dishes, but as she was the most docile of children, her mother
+never thought of anxiety. At nine o'clock Eldress Abby took Susanna to the
+laundry house, and there under a spreading maple were Sue and the two youngest
+little Shakeresses, children of seven and eight respectively. Sue was
+directing the plays: chattering, planning, ordering, and suggesting expedients
+to her slower-minded and less experienced companions. They had dragged a large
+box from one of the sheds and set it up under the tree. The interior had been
+quickly converted into a commodious residence, one not in the least of a
+Shaker type. Small bluing-boxes served for bedstead and dining-table, bits of
+broken china for the dishes, while tiny flat stones were the seats, and four
+clothes-pins, tastefully clad in handkerchiefs, surrounded the table.
+
+"Do they kneel in prayer before they eat, as all Believers do?" asked Shaker
+Mary.
+
+"I don't believe Adam and Eve was Believers, 'cause who would have taught them
+to be?" replied Sue; "still we might let them pray, anyway, though clothespins
+don't kneel nicely."
+
+"I've got another one all dressed," said little Shaker Jane.
+
+"We can't have any more; Adam and Eve did n't have only two children in my
+Sunday-School lesson, Cain and Abel," objected Sue.
+
+"Can't this one be a company?" pleaded Mary, anxious not to waste the
+clothespin.
+
+"But where could comp'ny come from?" queried Sue. "There was n't any more
+people anywheres but just Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. Put the clothespin
+in your apron-pocket, Jane, and bimeby we'll let Eve have a little new baby,
+and I'll get Mardie to name it right out of the Bible. Now let's begin. Adam
+is awfully tired this morning; he says, 'Eve, I've been workin' all night and
+I can't eat my breakfuss.' Now, Mary, you be Cain, he's a little boy, and you
+must say, 'Fardie, play a little with me, please!' and Fardie will say,
+'Child'en should n't talk at the--'"
+
+What subjects of conversation would have been aired at the Adamic family board
+before breakfast was finished will never be known, for Eldress Abby, with a
+firm but not unkind grasp, took Shaker Jane and Mary by their little hands and
+said, "Morning's not the time for play; run over to Sister Martha and help her
+shell the peas; then there'll be your seams to oversew."
+
+Sue watched the disappearing children and saw the fabric of her dream fade
+into thin air; but she was a person of considerable individuality for her
+years. Her lip quivered, tears rushed to her eyes and flowed silently down her
+cheeks, but without a glance at Eldress Abby or a word of comment she walked
+slowly away from the laundry, her chin high.
+
+"Sue meant all right, she was only playing the plays of the world," said
+Eldress Abby, "but you can well understand, Susanna, that we can't let our
+Shaker children play that way and get wrong ideas into their heads at the
+beginning. We don't condenm an honest, orderly marriage as a worldly
+institution, but we claim it has no place in Christ's kingdom; therefore we
+leave it to the world, where it belongs. The world's people live on the lower
+plane of Adam; the Shakers try to live on the Christ plane, in virgin purity,
+longsuffering, meekness, and patience."
+
+"I see, I know," Susanna answered slowly, with a little glance at injured Sue
+walking toward the house, "but we need n't leave the children unhappy this
+morning, for I can think of a play that will comfort them and please you. Come
+back, Sue! Wait a minute, Mary and Jane, before you go to Sister Martha! We
+will play the story that Sister Tabitha told us last week. Do you remember
+about Mother Ann Lee in the English prison? The soapbox will be her cell, for
+it was so small she could not lie down in it. Take some of the shingles, Jane,
+and close up the open side of the box. Do you see the large brown spot in one
+of them, Mary? Push that very hard with a clothespin and there 'll be a hole
+through the shingle; that's right! Now, Sister Tabitha said that Mother Ann
+was kept for days without food, for people thought she was a wicked, dangerous
+woman, and they would have been willing to let her die of starvation. But
+there was a great keyhole in the door, and James Whittaker, a boy of nineteen,
+who loved Mother Ann and believed in her, put the stem of a clay pipe in the
+hole and poured a mixture of wine and milk through it. He managed to do this
+day after day, so that when the jailer opened the cell door, expecting to find
+Mother Ann dying for lack of food, she walked out looking almost as strong and
+well as when she entered. You can play it all out, and afterwards you can make
+the ship that brought Mother Ann and the other Shakers from Liverpool to New
+York. The clothes-pins can be who will they be, Jane?"
+
+"William Lee, Nancy Lee, James Whittaker, and I forget the others," recited
+Jane, like an obedient parrot.
+
+"And it will be splendid to have James Whittaker, for he really came to
+Albion," said Mary.
+
+"Perhaps he stood on this very spot more than once," mused Abby. "It was
+Mother Ann's vision that brought them to this land, a vision of a large tree
+with outstretching branches, every leaf of which shone with the brightness of
+a burning torch! Oh! if the vision would only come true! If Believers would
+only come to us as many as the leaves on the tree," she sighed, as she and
+Susanna moved away from the group of chattering children, all as eager to play
+the history of Shakerism as they had been to dramatize the family life of Adam
+and Eve.
+
+"There must be so many men and women without ties, living useless lives, with
+no aim or object in them," Susanna said, "I wonder that more of them do not
+find their way here. The peace and goodness and helpfulness of the life sink
+straight into my heart. The Brothers and Sisters are so friendly and cheery
+with one another; there is neither gossip nor hard words; there is pleasant
+work, and your thoughts seem to be all so concentrated upon right living that
+it is like heaven below, only I feel that the cross is there, bravely as you
+all bear it."
+
+ "There are roses on my cross most beautiful to see,
+ As I turn from all the dross from which it sets me free,"
+
+quoted Eldress Abby, devoutly.
+
+"It is easy enough for me," continued Susanna, "for it was no cross for me to
+give up my husband at the time; but oh, if a woman had a considerate, loving
+man to live with, one who would strengthen her and help her to be good, one
+who would protect and cherish her, one who would be an example to his children
+and bring them up in the fear of the Lord--that would be heaven below, too;
+and how could she bear to give it all up when it seems so good, so true, so
+right? Might n't two people walk together to God if both chose the same path?"
+
+"It's my belief that one can find the road better alone than when somebody
+else is going alongside to distract them. Not that the Lord is going to turn
+anybody away, not even when they bring Him a lot of burned-out trash for a
+gift," said Eldress Abby, bluntly. "But don't you believe He sees the
+difference between a person that comes to Him when there is nowhere else to
+turn--a person that's tried all and found it wanting--and one that gives up
+freely pleasure, and gain, and husband, and home, to follow the Christ life?"
+
+"Yes, He must, He must," Susanna answered faintly. "But the children, Eldress
+Abby! If you had n't any, you could perhaps keep yourself from wanting them;
+but if you had, how could you give them up? Jesus was the great Saviour of
+mankind, but next to Him it seems as if the children had been the little
+saviours, from the time the first one was born until this very day!"
+
+"Yee, I've no doubt they keep the worst of the world's people, those that are
+living in carnal marriage without a thought of godliness, I've no doubt
+children keep that sort from going to the lowest perdition," allowed Eldress
+Abby;" and those we bring up in the Community make the best converts; but to a
+Shaker, the greater the sacrifice, the greater the glory. I wish you was
+gathered in, Susanna, for your hands and feet are quick to serve, your face is 
+turned toward the truth, and your heart is all ready to receive the
+revelation."
+
+"I wish I need n't turn my back on one set of duties to take up another,"
+murmured Susanna, timidly.
+
+"Yee; no doubt you do. Your business is to find out which are the higher
+duties, and then do those. Just make up your mind whether you'd rather
+replenish earth, as you've been doing, or replenish heaven, as we're trying to
+do. But I must go to my work; ten o'clock in the morning's a poor time to be
+discussing doctrine! You're for weeding, Susanna, I suppose?"
+
+Brother Ansel was seated at a grindstone under the apple trees, teaching
+(intermittently) a couple of boys to grind a scythe, when Susanna came to her
+work in the herb-garden, Sue walking discreetly at her heels.
+
+Ansel was a slow-moving, humorously-inclined, easygoing Brother, who was
+drifting into the kingdom of heaven without any special effort on his part.
+
+"I'd 'bout as lives be a Shaker as anything else," had been his rather dubious
+statement of faith when he requested admittance into the band of Believers.
+"No more crosses, accordin' to my notion, an' consid'able more chance o'
+crowns!"
+
+His experience of life "on the Adamic plane," the holy estate of matrimony,
+being the chief sin of this way of thought, had disposed him to regard woman
+as an apparently necessary, but not especially desirable, being. The theory of
+holding property in common had no terrors for him. He was generous,
+unambitious, frugal-minded, somewhat lacking in energy, and just as actively
+interested in his brother's welfare as in his own, which is perhaps not saying
+much. Shakerism was to him not a craving of the spirit, not a longing of the
+soul, but a simple, prudent theory of existence, lessening the various risks
+that man is exposed to in his journey through this vale of tears.
+
+"Womenfolks makes splendid Shakers," he was wont to say. "They're all right as
+Sisters, 'cause their belief makes 'em safe. It kind o' shears 'em o' their
+strength; tames their sperits; takes the sting out of 'em an' keeps 'em from
+bein' sassy an' domineerin'. Jest as long as they think marriage is right,
+they'll marry ye spite of anything ye can do or say--four of 'em married my
+father one after another, though he fit 'em off as hard as he knew how. But if
+ye can once get the faith o' Mother Ann into 'em, they're as good afterwards
+as they was wicked afore. There's no stoppin' women-folks once ye get 'em
+started; they don't keer whether it's heaven or the other place, so long as
+they get where they want to go!"
+
+Elder Daniel Gray had heard Brother Ansel state his religious theories more
+than once when he was first "gathered in," and secretly lamented the lack of
+spirituality in the new convert. The Elder was an instrument more finely
+attuned; sober, humble, pure-minded, zealous, consecrated to the truth as he
+saw it, he labored in and out of season for the faith he held so dear; yet as
+the years went on, he noted that Ansel, notwithstanding his eccentric views,
+lived an honest, temperate, Godfearing life, talking no scandal, dwelling in
+unity with his brethren and sisters, and upholding the banner of Shakerism in
+his own peculiar way.
+
+As Susanna approached him, Ansel called out, "The yairbs are all ready for ye,
+Susanna; the weeds have been on the rampage sence yesterday's rain. Seems like
+the more uselesser a thing is, the more it flourishes. The yairbs grow; oh,
+yes, they make out to _grow_; but you don't see 'em come leapin' an' tearin'
+out o' the airth like weeds. Then there's the birds! I've jest been stoppin'
+my grindin' to look at 'em carry on. Take 'em all in all, there ain't nothin'
+so lazy an' aimless an' busy'boutnothin' as birds. They go kitin' 'roun' from
+tree to tree, hoppin' an' chirpin', flyin' here an' there 'thout no airthly
+objeck 'ceptin' to fly back ag'in. There's a heap o' useless critters in the
+univarse, but I guess birds are 'bout the uselessest, 'less it's grasshoppers,
+mebbe."
+
+"I don't care what you say about the grasshoppers, Ansel, but you shan't abuse
+the birds," said Susanna, stooping over the beds of tansy and sage, thyme and
+summer savory. "Weeds or no weeds, we're going to have a great crop of herbs
+this year, Ansel!"
+
+"Yee, so we be! We sowed more'n usual so's to keep the two jiners at work
+long's we could.--Take that scythe over to the barn, Jacob, an' fetch me
+another, an' step spry."
+
+"What's a 'jiner,' Ansel?"
+
+"Winter Shakers, I call 'em. They're reg'lar constitooshanal dyed-in-the-wool
+jiners, jinin' most anything an' hookin' on most anywheres. They jine when it
+comes on too cold to sleep outdoors, an' they onjine when it comes on spring.
+Elder Gray's always hopin' to gather in new souls, so he gives the best of 'em
+a few months' trial. How are ye, Hannah?" he called to a Sister passing
+through the orchard to search for any possible green apples under the trees.
+"Make us a good old-fashioned deep-dish pandowdy an' we'll all do our best to
+eat it!"
+
+"I suppose the 'jiners' get discouraged and fear they can't keep up to the
+standard. Not everybody is good enough to lead a self-denying Shaker life,"
+said Susanna, pushing back the close sunbonnet from her warm face, which had
+grown younger, smoother, and sweeter in the last few weeks.
+
+"Nay, I s'pose likely; 'less they're same as me, a born Shaker," Ansel
+replied. "I don't hanker after strong drink; don't like tobaccer (always could
+keep my temper 'thout smokin'), ain't partic'lar 'bout meat-eatin', don't keer
+'bout heapin' up riches, can't 'stand the ways o' worldly women-folks, jest as
+lives confess my sins to the Elder as not, 'cause I hain't sinned any to
+amount to anything sence I made my first confession; there I be, a natural
+follerer o' Mother Ann Lee."
+
+Susanna drew her Shaker bonnet forward over her eyes and turned her back to
+Brother Ansel under the pretense of reaching over to the rows of sweet
+marjoram. She had never supposed it possible that she could laugh again, and
+indeed she seldom felt like it, but Ansel's interpretations of Shaker doctrine
+were almost too much for her latent sense of humor.
+
+"What are you smiling at, and me so sad, Mardie?" quavered Sue, piteously,
+from the little plot of easy weeding her mother had given her to do. "I keep
+remembering my game! It was such a _Christian_ game, too. Lots nicer than
+Mother Ann in prison; for Jane said her mother and father was both Believers,
+and nobody was good enough to pour milk through the keyhole but her. I wanted
+to give the clothes-pins story names, like Hilda and Percy, but I called them
+Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel just because I thought the Shakers would
+'specially like a Bible play. I love Elderess Abby, but she does stop my
+happiness, Mardie. That's the second time today, for she took Moses away from
+me when I was kissing him because he pinched his thumb in the window."
+
+"Why did you do that, Sue?" remonstrated her mother softly, remembering
+Ansel's proximity. "You never used to kiss strange little boys at home in
+Farnham."
+
+"Moses is n't a boy; he's only six, and that's a baby; besides, I like him
+better than any little boys at home, and that's the reason I kissed him;
+there's no harm in boy-kissing, is there, Mardie?"
+
+"You don't know anybody here very well yet; not well enough to kiss them,"
+Susanna answered, rather hopeless as to the best way of inculcating the
+undesirability of the Adamic plane of thought at this early age. "While we
+stay here, Sue, we ought both to be very careful to do exactly as the Shakers
+do."
+
+By this time mother and child had reached the orchard end of a row, and
+Brother Ansel was thirstily waiting to deliver a little more of the
+information with which his mind was always teeming.
+
+"Them Boston people that come over to our public meetin' last Sunday," he
+began, "they was dretful scairt 'bout what would become o' the human race if
+it should all turn Shakers. 'I guess you need n't worry,' I says; 'it'll take
+consid'able of a spell to convert all you city folks,' I says, 'an' after all,
+what if the world should come to an end?' I says. 'If half we hear is true
+'bout the way folks carry on in New York and Chicago, it's 'bout time it
+stopped,' I says, 'an' I guess the Lord could do a consid'able better job on a
+second one,' I says, 'after findin' out the weak places in this.' They can't
+stand givin' up their possessions, the world's folks; that's the principal
+trouble with 'em! If you don't have nothin' to give up, like some o' the
+tramps that happen along here and convince the Elder they're jest bustin' with
+the fear o' God, why, o' course 't ain't no trick at all to be a Believer."
+
+"Did you have much to give up, Brother Ansel?" Susanna asked. "'Bout's much as
+any sinner ever had that jined this Community," replied Ansel, complacently.
+"The list o' what I consecrated to this Society when I was gathered in was:
+One horse, one wagon, one two-year-old heifer, one axe, one saddle, one
+padlock, one bed and bedding, four turkeys, eleven hens, one pair o' plough-
+irons, two chains, and eleven dollars in cash. Can you beat that?"
+
+"Oh, yes, things/" said Susanna, absent-mindedly. "I was thinking of family
+and friends, pleasures and memories and ambitions and hopes."
+
+"I guess it don't pinch you any worse to give up a hope than it would a good
+two-year-old heifer," retorted Ansel; "but there, you can't never tell what
+folks'll hang on to the hardest! The man that drove them Boston folks over
+here last Sunday, did you notice him? the one that had the sister with a
+bright red dress an' hat on? --Land! I could think just how hell must look
+whenever my eye lighted on that girl's gitup! --Well, I done my best to exhort
+that driver, bein' as how we had a good chance to talk while we was hitchin'
+an' unhitchin' the team; an' Elder Gray always says I ain't earnest enough in
+preachin' the faith; --but he did n't learn anything from the meetin'. Kep'
+his eye on the Shaker bunnits, an' took notice o' the marchin' an' dancin',
+but he did n't care nothin' 'bout doctrine.
+
+"'I draw the line at bein' a cerebrate,' he says. 'I'm willin' to sell all my
+goods an' divide with the poor,' he says, 'but I ain't goin' to lie no
+cerebrate. If I don't have no other luxuries, I will have a wife,' he says.
+'I've hed three, an' if this one don't last me out, I'll get another, if it's
+only to start the kitchen fire in the mornin' an' put the cat in the shed
+nights!'"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Louisa's Mind
+
+
+Louisa, otherwise Mrs. Adlai Banks, the elder sister of Susanna s husband, was
+a rock-ribbed widow of forty-five summers, --forty-five winters would seem a
+better phrase in which to assert her age,-- who resided on a small farm twenty
+miles from the manufacturing town of Farnham.
+
+When the Fates were bestowing qualities of mind and heart upon the Hathaway
+babies, they gave the more graceful, genial, likable ones to John, not
+realizing, perhaps, what bad use he would make of them, --and endowed Louisa
+with great deposits of honesty, sincerity, energy, piety, and frugality, all
+so mysteriously compounded that they turned to granite in her hands. If she
+had been consulted, it would have been all the same. She would never have
+accepted John's charm of personality at the expense of being saddled with his
+weaknesses, and he would not have taken her cast-iron virtues at any price
+whatsoever.
+
+She was sweeping her porch on that day in May when Susanna and Sue had wakened
+in the bare upper chamber at the Shaker Settlement--Sue clear-eyed, jubilant,
+expectant, unafraid; Susanna pale from her fitful sleep, weary with the burden
+of her heart.
+
+Looking down the road, Mrs. Banks espied the form of her brother John walking
+in her direction and leading Jack by the hand.
+
+This was a most unusual sight, for John's calls had been uncommonly few of
+late years, since a man rarely visits a lady relative for the mere purpose of
+hearing "a piece of her mind." This piece, large, solid, highly flavored with
+pepper, and as acid as mental vinegar could make it, was Louisa Banks's only
+contribution to conversation when she met her brother. She could not stop for
+any airy persiflage about weather, crops, or politics when her one desire was
+to tell him what she thought of him.
+
+"Good-morning, Louisa. Shake hands with your aunt, Jack."
+
+"He can't till I'm through sweeping. Good-morning, John; what brings you
+here?"
+
+John sat down on the steps, and Jack flew to the barn, where there was
+generally an amiable hired man and a cheerful cow, both infinitely better
+company than his highly respected and wealthy aunt.
+
+"I came because I had to bring the boy to the only relation I've got in the
+world," John answered tersely. "My wife's left me."
+
+"Well, she's been a great while doing it," remarked Louisa, digging her broom
+into the cracks of the piazza floor and making no pause for reflection. "If
+she had n't had the patience of Job and the meekness of Moses, she'd have gone
+long before. Where'd she go?"
+
+"I don't know; she did n't say."
+
+"Did you take the trouble to look through the house for her? I ain't certain
+you fairly know her by sight nowadays, do you?"
+
+John flushed crimson, but bit his lip in an attempt to keep his temper. "She
+left a letter," he said, "and she took Sue with her."
+
+"That was all right; Sue's a nervous little thing and needs at least one
+parent; she has n't been used to more, so she won't miss anything. Jack's like
+most of the Hathaways; he'll grow up his own way, without anybody's help or
+hindrance. What are you going to do with him?"
+
+"Leave him with you, of course. What else could I do?" "Very well, I'll take
+him, and while I'm about it I'd like to give you a piece of my mind."
+
+John was fighting for selfcontrol, but he was too wretched and remorseful for
+rage to have any real sway over him.
+
+"Is it the same old piece, or a different one?" he asked, setting his teeth
+grimly. "I should n't think you'd have any mind left, you've given so many
+pieces of it to me already."
+
+"I have some left, and plenty, too," answered Louisa, dashing into the house,
+banging the broom into a corner, coming out again like a breeze, and slamming
+the door behind her. "You can leave the boy here and welcome; I'll take good
+care of him, and if you don't send me twenty dollars a month for his food and
+clothes, I'll turn him outdoors. The more responsibility other folks rid you
+of, the more you'll let 'em, and I won't take a feather's weight off you for
+fear you'll sink into everlasting perdition."
+
+"I did n't expect any sympathy from you," said John, drearily, pulling himself
+up from the steps and leaning against the honeysuckle trellis. "Susanna's just
+the same. Women are all as hard as the nether millstone. They're hard if
+they're angels, and hard if they're devils; it docs n't make much difference."
+
+"I guess you've found a few soft ones, if report says true," returned Louisa,
+bluntly. "You'd better go and get some of their sympathy, the kind you can buy
+and pay for. The way you've ruined your life turns me fairly sick. You had a
+good father and mother, good education and advantages, enough money to start
+you in business, the best of wives, and two children any man could be proud
+of, one of 'em especially. You've thrown 'em all away, and what for? Horses
+and cards and gay company, late suppers, with wine, and for aught I know,
+whiskey, you the son of a man who did n't know the taste of ginger beer!
+You've spent your days and nights with a pack of carousing men and women that
+would take your last cent and not leave you enough for honest burial."
+
+"It's a pity we did n't make a traveling preacher of you!" exclaimed John,
+bitterly. "Lord Almighty, I wonder how such women as you can live in the
+world, you know so little about it, and so little about men."
+
+"I know all I want to about 'em," retorted Louisa, "and precious little that's
+good. They 're a gluttonous, self-indulgent, extravagant, reckless, pleasure-
+loving lot! My husband was one of the best of 'em, and he would n't have
+amounted to a hill of beans if I had n't devoted fifteen years to
+disciplining, uplifting, and strengthening him!"
+
+"You managed to strengthen him so that he died before he was fifty!"
+
+"It don't matter when a man dies," said the remorseless Mrs. Banks, "if he's
+succeeded in living a decent, Godfearing life. As for you, John Hathaway, I'll
+tell you the truth if you are my brother, for Susanna's too much of a saint to
+speak out."
+
+"Don't be afraid; Susanna's spoken out at last, plainly enough to please even
+you!"
+
+"I'm glad of it, for I did n't suppose she had spunk enough to resent
+anything. I shall be sorry tomorrow, 's likely as not, for freeing my mind as
+much as I have, but my temper's up and I'm going to be the humble instrument
+of Providence and try to turn you from the error of your ways. You've defaced
+and degraded the temple the Lord built for you, and if He should come this
+minute and try to turn out the crowd of evildoers you've kept in it, I doubt
+if He could!"
+
+"I hope He'll approve of the way you've used your 'temple,'" said John, with
+stinging emphasis. "I should n't want to live in such a noisy one myself; I'd
+rather be a bat in a belfry. Goodbye; I've had a pleasant call, as usual, and
+you've been a real sister to me in my trouble. You shall have the twenty
+dollars a month. Jack's clothes are in that valise, and there'll be a trunk
+tomorrow. Susanna said she'd write and let you know her whereabouts."
+
+So saying, John Hathaway strode down the path, closed the gate behind him, and
+walked rapidly along the road that led to the station. It was a quiet road and
+he met few persons. He had neither dressed nor shaved since the day before;
+his face was haggard, his heart was like a lump of lead in his breast. Of what
+use to go to the empty house in Farnham when he could stifle his misery by a
+night with his friends?
+
+No, he could not do that, either! The very thought of them brought a sense of
+satiety and disgust; the craving for what they would give him would come again
+in time, no doubt, but for the moment he was sick to the very soul of all they
+stood for. The feeling of complete helplessness, of desertion, of being alone
+in mid-ocean without a sail or a star in sight, mounted and swept over him.
+Susanna had been his sail, his star, although he had never fully realized it,
+and he had cut himself adrift from her pure, steadfast love, blinding himself
+with cheap and vulgar charms.
+
+The next train to Farnham was not due for an hour. His steps faltered; he
+turned into a clump of trees by the wayside and flung himself on the ground to
+cry like a child, he who had not shed a tear since he was a boy of ten. If
+Susanna could have seen that often longed-for burst of despair and remorse,
+that sudden recognition of his sins against himself and her, that gush of
+penitent tears, her heart might have softened once again; a flicker of flame
+might have lighted the ashes of her dying love; she might have taken his head
+on her shoulder, and said, "Never mind, John! Let's forget, and begin all over
+again!"
+
+
+Matters did not look any brighter for John the next week, for his senior
+partner, Joel Atterbury, requested him to withdraw from the firm as soon as
+matters could be legally arranged. He was told that he had not been doing, nor
+earning, his share; that his way of living during the year just past had not
+been any credit to "the concern," and that he, Atterbury, sympathized too
+heartily with Mrs. John Hathaway to take any pleasure in doing business with
+Mr. John.
+
+John's remnant of pride, completely humbled by this last withdrawal of
+confidence, would not suffer him to tell Atterbury that he had come to his
+senses and bidden farewell to the old life, or so he hoped and believed. To
+lose a wife and child in a way infinitely worse than death; to hear the
+unwelcome truth that as a husband you have grown so offensive as to be beyond
+endurance; to have your own sister tell you that you richly deserve such
+treatment; to be virtually dismissed from a valuable business connection, all
+this is enough to sober any man above the grade of a moral idiot, and John was
+not that; he was simply a self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, thoughtless,
+willful fellow, without any great amount of principle. He took his medicine,
+however, said nothing, and did his share of the business from day to day
+doggedly, keeping away from his partner as much as possible.
+
+Ellen, the faithful maid of all work, stayed on with him at the old home; Jack
+wrote to him every week, and often came to spend Sunday with him.
+
+"Aunt Louisa's real good to me," he told his father, "but she's not like
+mother. Seems to me mother's kind of selfish staying away from us so long.
+When do you expect her back?"
+
+"I don't know; not before winter, I'm afraid; and don't call her selfish, I
+won't have it! Your mother never knew she had a self."
+
+"If she'd only left Sue behind, we could have had more good times, we three
+together!"
+
+"No, our family is four, Jack, and we can never have any good times, one, two,
+or three of us, because we're four! When one's away, whichever it is, it's
+wrong, but it's the worst when it's mother. Does your Aunt Louisa write to
+her?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes, but she never lets me post the letters."
+
+"Do you write to your mother? You ought to, you know, even if you don't have
+time for me. You could ask your aunt to enclose your letters in hers."
+
+"Do you write to her, father?"
+
+"Yes, I write twice a week," John answered, thinking drearily of the semi-
+weekly notes posted in Susanna's empty worktable upstairs. Would she ever read
+them? He doubted it, unless he died, and she came back to settle his affairs;
+but of course he would n't die, no such good luck. Would a man die who
+breakfasted at eight, dined at one, supped at six, and went to bed at ten?
+Would a man die who worked in the garden an hour every afternoon, with half a
+day Saturday; that being the task most disagreeable to him and most
+appropriate therefore for penance?
+
+Susanna loved flowers and had always wanted a garden, but John had been too
+much occupied with his own concerns to give her the needed help or money so
+that she could carry out her plans. The last year she had lost heart in many
+ways, so that little or nothing had been accomplished of all she had dreamed.
+It would have been laughable, had it not been pathetic, to see John Hathaway
+dig, delve, grub, sow, water, weed, transplant, generally at the wrong moment,
+in that dream-garden of Susanna's. He asked no advice and read no books. With
+feverish intensity, with complete ignorance of Nature's laws and small
+sympathy with their intricacies, he dug, hoed, raked, fertilized, and planted
+during that lonely summer. His absentmindedness caused some expensive
+failures, as when the wide expanse of Susanna's drying ground, which was to be
+velvety lawn, "came up" curly lettuce; but he rooted out his frequent mistakes
+and patiently planted seeds or roots or bulbs over and over and over and over,
+until something sprouted in his beds, whether it was what he intended or not.
+While he weeded the brilliant orange nasturtiums, growing beside the magenta
+portulacca in a friendly proximity that certainly would never have existed had
+the mistress of the house been the head-gardener, he thought of nothing but
+his wife. He knew her pride, her reserve, her sensitive spirit; he knew her
+love of truth and honor and purity, the standards of life and conduct she had
+tried to hold him to so valiantly, and which he had so dragged in the dust
+during the blindness and the insanity of the last two years.
+
+He, John Hathaway, was a deserted husband; Susanna had crept away all wounded
+and resentful. Where was she living and how supporting herself and Sue, when
+she could not have had a hundred dollars in the world? Probably Louisa was the
+source of income; conscientious, infernally disagreeable Louisa!
+
+Would yet the rumor of his changed habit o[ life reach her by some means in
+her place of hiding, sooner or later? Would she not yearn for a sight of Jack?
+Would she not finally give him a chance to ask forgiveness, or had she lost
+every trace of affection for him, as her letter seemed to imply? He walked the
+garden paths, with these and other unanswerable questions, and when he went to
+his lonely room at night, he held the lamp up to a bit of poetry that he had
+cut from a magazine and pinned to the looking-glass. If John Hathaway could be
+brought to the reading of poetry, he might even glance at the Bible in course
+of time, Louisa would have said. It was in May that Susanna had gone, and the
+first line of verse held his attention.
+
+  May comes, day comes,
+  One who was away comes;
+  All the earth is glad again,
+  Kind and fair to me.
+
+  May comes, day comes,
+  One who was away comes;
+  Set her place at hearth and board
+  As it used to be.
+
+  May comes, day comes,
+  One who was away comes;
+  Higher are the hills of home,
+  Bluer is the sea.
+
+The Hathaway house was in the suburbs, on a rise of ground, and as John turned
+to the window he saw the full moon hanging yellow in the sky. It shone on the
+verdant slopes and low wooded hills that surrounded the town, and cast a
+glittering pathway on the ocean that bathed the beaches of the nearby shore.
+
+"How long shall I have to wait," he wondered, "before my hills of home look
+higher, and my sea bluer, because Susanna has come back to 'hearth and
+board'!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The Little Quail Bird
+
+
+Susanna had helped at various household tasks ever since her arrival at the
+Settlement, for there was no room for drones in the Shaker hive; but after a
+few weeks in the kitchen with Martha, the herb-garden had been assigned to her
+as her particular province, the Sisters thinking her better fitted for it than
+for the preserving and pickling of fruit, or the basket-weaving that needed
+special apprenticeship.
+
+The Shakers were the first people to raise, put up, and sell garden seeds in
+our present-day fashion, and it was they, too, who began the preparation of
+botanical medicines, raising, gathering, drying, and preparing herbs and roots
+for market; and this industry, driven from the field by modern machinery, was
+still a valuable source of income in Susanna's day. Plants had always grown
+for Susanna, and she loved them like friends, humoring their weakness,
+nourishing their strength, stimulating, coaxing, disciplining them, until they
+could do no less than flourish under her kind and hopeful hand.
+
+Oh, that sweet, honest, comforting little garden of herbs, with its wholesome
+fragrances! Healing lay in every root and stem, in every leaf and bud, and the
+strong aromatic odors stimulated her flagging spirit or her aching head, after
+the sleepless nights in which she tried to decide her future life and Sue's.
+
+The plants were set out in neat rows and clumps, and she soon learned to know
+the strange ones--chamomile, lobelia, bloodroot, wormwood, lovage, boneset,
+lemon and sweet balm, lavender and rue, as well as she knew the old
+acquaintances familiar to every country-bred child--pennyroyal, peppermint or
+spearmint, yellow dock, and thoroughwort.
+
+There was hoeing and weeding before the gathering and drying came; then
+Brother Calvin, who had charge of the great press, would moisten the dried
+herbs and press them into quarter- and half-pound cakes ready for Sister
+Martha, who would superintend the younger Shakeresses in papering and labeling
+them for the market. Last of all, when harvesting was over, Brother Ansel
+would mount the newly painted seed-cart and leave on his driving trip through
+the country. Ansel was a capital salesman, but Brother Issachar, who once took
+his place and sold almost nothing, brought home a lad on the seed-cart, who
+afterward became a shining light in the Community. ( Thus, said Elder Gray,
+does God teach us the diversity of gifts, whereby all may be unashamed.")
+
+If the Albion Shakers were honest and ardent in faith, Susanna thought that
+their "works" would indeed bear the strictest examination. The Brothers made
+brooms, floor and dish-mops, tubs, pails, and churns, and indeed almost every
+trade was represented in the various New England Communities. Physicians there
+were, a few, but no lawyers, sheriffs, policemen, constables, or soldiers,
+just as there were no courts or saloons or jails. Where there was perfect
+equality of possession and no private source of gain, it amazed Susanna to see
+the cheery labor, often continued late at night from the sheer joy of it, and
+the earnest desire to make the Settlement prosperous. While the Brothers were
+hammering, nailing, planing, sawing, ploughing, and seeding, the Sisters were
+carding and spinning cotton, wool, and flax, making kerchiefs of linen, straw
+Shaker bonnets, and dozens of other useful marketable things, not forgetting
+their famous Shaker apple sauce.
+
+Was there ever such a busy summer, Susanna wondered; yet with all the early
+rising, constant labor, and simple fare, she was stronger and hardier than she
+had been for years. The Shaker palate was never tickled with delicacies, yet
+the food was well cooked and sufficiently varied. At first there had been the
+winter vegetables: squash, yellow turnips, beets, and parsnips, with once a
+week a special Shaker dinner of salt codfish, potatoes, onions, and milk
+gravy. Each Sister served her turn as cook, but all alike had a wonderful hand
+with flour, and the wholewheat bread, cookies, ginger cake, and milk puddings
+were marvels of lightness. Martha, in particular, could wean the novitiate
+Shaker from a too riotous devotion to meat-eating better than most people, for
+every dish she sent to the table was delicate, savory, and attractive.
+
+Dear, patient, devoted Martha! How Susanna learned to love her as they worked
+together in the big sunny, shining kitchen, where the cooking-stove as well as
+every tin plate and pan and spoon might have served as a mirror! Martha had
+joined the Society in her mother's arms, being given up to the Lord and placed
+in "the children's order" before she was one year old.
+
+"If you should unite with us, Susanna," she said one night after the early
+supper, when they were peeling apples together, "you'd be thankful you begun
+early with your little Sue, for she's got a natural attraction to the world,
+and for it. Not but that she's a tender, loving, obedient little soul; but
+when she's among the other young ones, there's a flyaway look about her that
+makes her seem more like a fairy than a child."
+
+"She's having rather a hard time learning Shaker ways, but she'll do better in
+time," sighed her mother. "She came to me of her own accord yesterday and
+asked: 'Bettent I have my curls cut off, Mardie?'"
+
+"I never put that idea into her head," Martha interrupted. "She's a visitor
+and can wear her hair as she's been brought up to wear it."
+
+"I know, but I fear Sue was moved by other than religious reasons. 'I get up
+so early, Mardie,' she said, 'and it takes so long to unsnarl and untangle me,
+and I get so hot when I'm helping in the hayfield, and then I have to be
+curled for dinner, and curled again for supper, and so it seems like wasting
+both our times!' Her hair would be all the stronger for cutting, I thought, as
+it's so long for her age; but I could n't put the shears to it when the time
+came, Martha. I had to take her to Eldress Abby. She sat up in front of the
+little looking-glass as still as a mouse, while the curls came off, but when
+the last one fell into Abby's apron, she suddenly put her hands over her face
+and cried: 'Oh, Mardie, we shall never be the same togedder, you and I, after
+this!' --She seemed to see her 'little past,' her childhood, slipping away
+from her, all in an instant. I did n't let her know that I cried over the box
+of curls last night!"
+
+"You did wrong," rebuked Martha. "You should n't make an idol of your child or
+your child's beauty."
+
+"You don't think God might put beauty into the world just to give His children
+joy, Martha?"
+
+Martha was no controversialist. She had taken her opinions, ready-made, from
+those she considered her superiors, and although she was willing to make any
+sacrifice for her religion, she did not wish to be confused by too many
+opposing theories of God's intentions.
+
+"You know I never argue when I've got anything baking," she said; and taking
+the spill of a corn-broom from a table-drawer, she opened the oven door and
+delicately plunged it into the loaf. Then, gazing at the straw as she withdrew
+it, she said: "You must talk doctrine with Eldress Abby, Susanna, not with me;
+but I guess doctrine won't help you so much as thinking out your life for
+yourself.
+
+  "No one can sing my psalm for me,
+  Reward must come from labor,
+  I'll sow for peace, and reap in truth
+  God's mercy and his favor!"
+
+Martha was the chief musician of the Community, and had composed many hymns
+and tunes--some of them under circumstances that she believed might entitle
+them to be considered directly inspired. Her clear full voice filled the
+kitchen and floated out into the air after Susanna, as she called Sue and,
+darning-basket in hand, walked across the road to the great barn.
+
+The herb-garden was one place where she could think out her life, although no
+decision had as yet been born of those thoughtful mornings.
+
+Another spot for meditation was the great barn, relic of the wonderful earlier
+days, and pride of the present Settlement. A hundred and seventy-five feet
+long and three and a half stories high, it dominated the landscape. First,
+there was the cellar, where all the refuse fell, to do its duty later on in
+fertilizing the farm lands; then came the first floor, where the stalls for
+horses, oxen, and cows lined the walls on either side. Then came the second
+floor, where hay was kept, and to reach this a bridge forty feet long was
+built on stone piers ten feet in height, sloping up from the ground to the
+second story. Over the easy slope of this bridge the full haycarts were
+driven, to add their several burdens to the golden haymows. High at the top
+was an enormous grain room, where mounds of yellow corn-ears reached from
+floor to ceiling; and at the back was a great window opening on Massabesic
+Pond and Knights' Hill, with the White Mountains towering blue or snow-capped
+in the distance. There was an old-fashioned, list-bottomed, straight-backed
+Shaker chair in front of the open window, a chair as uncomfortable as Shaker
+doctrines to the daughter of Eve, and there Susanna often sat with her sewing
+or mending, Sue at her feet building castles out of corncobs, plaiting the
+husks into little mats, or taking out basting threads from her mother's work.
+
+"My head feels awfully undressed without my curls, Mardie," she said. "I'm
+most afraid Fardie won't like the looks of me; do you think we ought to have
+asked him before we shingled me? --He does _despise_ unpretty things so!"
+
+"I think if we had asked him he would have said, 'Do as you think best.'"
+
+"He always says that when he does n't care what you do," observed Sue, with
+one of her startling bursts of intuition. "Sister Martha has a printed card on
+the wall in the children's diningroom, and I've got to learn all the poetry on
+it because I need it worse than any of the others:--
+
+  "What we deem good order, we're willing to state,
+  Eat hearty and decent, and clear out your plate;
+  Be thankful to heaven for what we receive,
+  And not make a mixture or compound to leave.
+
+  "We often find left on the same China dish,
+  Meat, apple sauce, pickle, brown bread and minced fish:
+  Another's replenished with butter and cheese,
+  With pie, cake, and toast, perhaps, added to these."
+
+"You say it very nicely," commended Susanna.
+
+"There's more:--
+
+  "Now if any virtue in this can be shown,
+  By peasant, by lawyer, or king on the throne;
+  We freely will forfeit whatever we've said,
+  And call it a virtue to waste meat and bread.
+
+"There's a great deal to learn when you're being a Shaker," sighed Sue, as she
+finished her rhyme.
+
+"There's a great deal to learn everywhere," her mother answered. "What verse
+did Eldress Abby give you today?"
+
+  "For little tripping maids may follow God
+  Along the ways that saintly feet have trod,"
+
+quoted the child. "Am I a tripping maid, Mardie?" she continued.
+
+"Yes, dear." "If I trip too much, might n't I fall?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose so."
+
+"Is tripping the same as skipping?"
+
+"About the same."
+
+"Is it polite to tripanskip when you're following God?"
+
+"It could n't be impolite if you meant to be good. A tripping maid means just
+a young one."
+
+"What is a maid?"
+
+"A little girl."
+
+"When a maid grows up, what is she?"
+
+"Why she's a maiden, I suppose."
+
+"When a maiden grows up, what is she?"
+
+"Just a woman, Sue."
+
+"What is saintly feet?"
+
+"Feet like those of Eldress Abby or Elder Gray; feet of people who have always
+tried to do right."
+
+"Are Brother Ansel's feet saintly?"
+
+"He's a good, kind, hardworking man."
+
+"Is good, kind, hardworking, same as saintly?"
+
+"Well, it's not so very different, perhaps. Now, Sue, I've asked you before,
+don't let your mind grope, and your little tongue wag, every instant; it is
+n't good for you, and it certainly is n't good for me!"
+
+"All right; but 'less I gropeanwag sometimes, I don't see how I'll ever learn
+the things I 'specially want to know?" sighed Sue the insatiable.
+
+"Shall I tell you a Shaker story, one that Eldress Abby told me last evening?"
+
+"Oh, do, Mardie!" cried Sue, crossing her feet, folding her hands, and looking
+up into her mother's face expectantly.
+
+"Once there was a very good Shaker named Elder Calvin Green, and some one
+wrote him a letter asking him to come a long distance and found a Settlement
+in the western part of New York State. He and some other Elders and Eldresses
+traveled five days, and stopped at the house of a certain Joseph Pelham to
+spend Sunday and hold a meeting. On Monday morning, very tired, and wondering
+where to stay and begin his preaching, the Elder went out into the woods to
+pray for guidance. When he rose from his knees, feeling stronger and lighter-
+hearted, a young quail came up to him so close that he picked it up. It was
+not a bit afraid, neither did the old parent birds who were standing near by
+show any sign of fear, though they are very timid creatures. The Elder
+smoothed the young bird's feathers a little while and then let it go, but he
+thought an angel seemed to say to him, 'The quail is a sign; you will know
+before night what it means, and before tomorrow people will be coming to you
+to learn the way to God.'
+
+"Soon after, a flock of these shy little birds alighted on Joseph Pelham's
+house, and the Elders were glad, and thought it signified the flock of
+Believers that would gather in that place; for the Shakers see more in signs
+than other people. Just at night a young girl of twelve or thirteen knocked at
+the door and told Elder Calvin that she wanted to become a Shaker, and that
+her father and mother were willing.
+
+"'Here is the little quail!' cried the Elder, and indeed she was the first who
+flocked to the meetings and joined the new Community.
+
+"On their return to their old home across the state the Elders took the little
+quail girl with them. It was November then, and the canals through which they
+traveled were clogged with ice. One night, having been ferried across the
+Mohawk River, they took their baggage and walked for miles before they could
+find shelter. Finally, when they were within three miles of their home, Elder
+Calvin shortened the way by going across the open fields through the snow, up
+and down the hills and through the gullies and over fences, till they reached
+the house at midnight, safe and sound, the brave little quail girl having
+trudged beside them the whole distance, carrying her tin pail."
+
+Sue was transported with interest, her lips parted, her eyes shining, her
+hands clasped. "Oh, I wish I could be a brave little quail girl, Mardie! What
+became of her?"
+
+"Her name was Polly Reed, and when she grew up, she became a teacher of the
+Shaker school, then an Eldress, and even a preacher. I don't know what kind of
+a little quail girl you would make, Sue; do you think you could walk for miles
+through the ice and snow uncomplainingly?"
+
+"I don' know's I could," sighed Sue; "but," she added hopefully, "perhaps I
+could teach or preach, and then I could gropeanwag as much as ever I liked."
+Then, after a lengthy pause, in which her mind worked feverishly, she said,
+"Mardie, I was just groping a little bit, but I won't do it any more tonight.
+If the old quail birds in the woods where Elder Calvin prayed, if those old
+birds had been Shaker birds, there would n't have been any little quail birds,
+would there, because Shakers don't have children, and then perhaps there would
+n't have been any little Polly Reed."
+
+Susanna rose hurriedly from the list-bottomed chair and folded her work. "I'll
+go up and help you undress now," she said; "it's seven o'clock, and I must go
+to the family meeting."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Susanna Speaks in Meeting
+
+
+It was the Sabbath day and the Believers were gathered in the meetinghouse,
+Brethren and Sisters seated quietly on their separate benches, with the
+children by themselves in their own place. As the men entered the room they
+removed their hats and coats and hung them upon wooden pegs that lined the
+sides of the room, while the women took off their bonnets; then, after
+standing for a moment of perfect silence, they seated themselves.
+
+In Susanna's time the Sunday costume for the men included trousers of deep
+blue cloth with a white line and a vest of darker blue, exposing a full-
+bosomed shirt that had a wide turned-down collar fastened with three buttons.
+The Sisters were in pure white dresses, with neck and shoulders covered with
+snowy kerchiefs, their heads crowned with their white net caps, and a large
+white pocket handkerchief hung over the left arm. Their feet were shod with
+curious pointed-toed cloth shoes of ultramarine blue--a fashion long since
+gone by.
+
+Susanna had now become accustomed to the curious solemn march or dance in
+which of course none but the Believers ever joined, and found in her present
+exalted mood the songs and the exhortations strangely interesting and not
+unprofitable.
+
+Tabitha, the most aged of the group of Albion Sisters, confessed that she
+missed the old times when visions were common, when the Spirit manifested
+itself in extraordinary ways, and the gift of tongues descended. Sometimes, in
+the Western Settlement where she was gathered in, the whole North Family would
+march into the highway in the fresh morning hours, and while singing some
+sacred hymn, would pass on to the Center Family, and together in solemn yet
+glad procession they would mount the hillside to "Jehovah's Chosen Square,"
+there to sing and dance before the Lord.
+
+"I wish we could do something like that now!" sighed Hetty Arnold, a pretty
+young creature who had moments of longing for the pomps and vanities. "If we
+have to give up all worldly pleasures, I think we might have more religious
+ones!"
+
+"We were a younger church in those old times of which Sister Tabitha speaks,"
+said Eldress Abby. "You must remember, Hetty, that we were children in faith,
+and needed signs and manifestations, pictures and object-lessons. We've been
+trained to think and reason now, and we've put away some of our picture-books.
+There have been revelations to tell us we needed movements and exercises to
+quicken our spiritual powers, and to give energy and unity to our worship, and
+there have been revelations telling us to give them up; revelations bidding us
+to sing more, revelations telling us to use wordless songs. Then anthems were
+given us, and so it has gone on, for we have been led of the Spirit."
+
+"I'd like more picture-books," pouted Hetty under her breath.
+
+Today the service began with a solemn song, followed by speaking and prayer
+from a visiting elder. Then, after a long and profound silence, the company
+rose and joined in a rhythmic dance which signified the onward travel of the
+soul to full redemption; the opening and closing of the hands meaning the
+scattering and gathering of blessing. There was no accompaniment, and both the
+music and the words were the artless expression of fervent devotion.
+
+Susanna sat in her corner beside the aged Tabitha, who would never dance again
+before the Lord, though her quavering voice joined in the chorus. The spring
+floor rose and fell under the quick rhythmic tread of the worshipers, and with
+each revolution about the room the song gained in power and fervor.
+
+  I am never weary bringing my life unto God,
+  I am never weary singing His way is good.
+  With the voice of an angel with power from above,
+  I would publish the blessing of soul-saving love.
+
+ The steps grew slower and more sedate, the voices died away, the arms sank
+slowly by the sides, and the hands ceased their movement.
+
+Susanna rose to her feet, she knew not how or why. Her cheeks were flushed,
+her head bent.
+
+"Dear friends," she said, "I have now been among you for nearly three months,
+sharing your life, your work, and your worship. You may well wish to know
+whether I have made up my mind to join this Community, and I can only say that
+although I have prayed for light, I cannot yet see my way clearly. I am happy
+here with you, and although I have been a church member for years, I have
+never before longed so ardently to present my body and soul as a sacrifice
+unto the Lord. I have tried not to be a burden to you. The small weekly sum
+that I put into the treasury I will not speak of, lest I seem to think that
+the 'gift of God may be purchased with money,' as the Scriptures say; but I
+have endeavored to be loyal to your rules and customs, your aims and ideals,
+and to the confidence you have reposed in me. Oh, my dear Sisters and
+Brothers, pray for me that I be enabled to see my duty more plainly. It is not
+the fleshpots that will call me back to the world; if I go, it will be because
+the duties I have left behind take such shape that they draw me out of his
+shelter in spite of myself. I thank you for the help you have given me these
+last weeks; God knows my gratitude can never be spoken in words."
+
+Elder Gray's voice broke the silence that followed Susanna's speech. "I only
+echo the sentiments of the Family when I say that our Sister Susanna shall
+have such time as she requires before deciding to unite with this body of
+Believers. No pressure shall be brought to bear upon her, and she will be, as
+she ever has been, a welcome guest under our roof. She has been an inspiration
+to the children, a comfort and aid to the Sisters, an intelligent comrade to
+the Brethren, and a sincere and earnest student of the truth. May the Spirit
+draw her into the Virgin Church of the New Creation!"
+
+"Yee and amen!" exclaimed Eldress Abby, devoutly: "'For thus saith the Lord of
+hosts: I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land;
+and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I
+will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.'"
+
+  "O Virgin Church, how great the light,
+     What cloud can dim thy way?"
+
+sang Martha from her place at the end of a bench; and all the voices took up
+the hymn softly as the company sat with bowed heads.
+
+Then Brother Issachar rose from his corner, saying: "Jesus called upon his
+disciples to give up everything: houses, lands, relationships, and even the
+selfishness of their own lives. They could not call their lives their own.
+'Lo! we have left all and followed thee,' said Peter; 'fathers, mothers,
+wives, children, houses, lands, and even our own lives also.' It is a great
+price to pay, but we buy Heaven with it!"
+
+"Yee, we do," said Brother Thomas Scattergood, devoutly. "To him that
+overcometh shall the great prize be given."
+
+"God help the weaker brethren!" murmured young Brother Nathan, in so low a
+voice that few could hear him. Moved by the same impulse, Tabitha, Abby, and
+Martha burst into one of the most triumphant of the Shaker songs, one that was
+never sung save when the meeting was "full of the Spirit":-- 
+
+  "I draw no blank nor miss the prize,
+  I see the work, the sacrifice,
+  And I'll be loyal, I'll be wise, A faithful overcomer!"
+
+The company rose and began again to march in a circle around the center of the
+room, the Brethren two abreast leading the column, the Sisters following
+after. There was a waving movement of the hands by drawing inward as if
+gathering in spiritual good and storing it up for future need. In the marching
+and countermarching the worshipers frequently changed their positions,
+ultimately forming into four circles, symbolical of the four dispensations as
+expounded in Shakerism, the first from Adam to Abraham; the second from
+Abraham to Jesus; the third from Jesus to Mother Ann Lee; and the fourth the
+millennial era.
+
+The marching grew livelier; the bodies of the singers swayed lightly with
+emotion, the faces glowed with feeling.
+
+Over and over the hymn was sung, gathering strength and fullness as the
+Believers entered more and more into the spirit of their worship. Whenever the
+refrain came in with its militant fervor, crude, but sincere and effective,
+the singers seenled faithintoxicated; and Sister Martha in particular might
+have been treading the heavenly streets instead of the meetinghouse floor, so
+complete was her absorption. The voices at length grew softer, and the
+movement slower, and after a few moments' reverent silence the company filed
+out of the room solemnly and without speech.
+
+  I am as sure that heav'n is mine
+  As though my vision could define
+  Or pencil draw the boundary line
+  Where love and truth shall con quer.
+
+"The Lord ain't shaken Susanna hard enough yet," thought Brother Ansel
+shrewdly from his place in the rear. "She ain't altogether gathered in, not by
+no manner o' means, because of that unregenerate son of Adam she's left
+behind; but there's the makin's of a pow'ful good Shaker in Susanna, if she
+finally takes holt!"
+
+"What manner of life is my husband living, now that I have deserted him? Who
+is being a mother to Jack?" These were the thoughts that troubled Susanna
+Hathaway's soul as she crossed the grass to her own building.
+
+
+ 
+
+VII
+
+"The Lower Plane"
+
+
+Brother Nathan Bennett was twenty years old and Sister Hetty Arnold was
+eighteen. They had been left with the Shakers by their respective parents ten
+years before, and, growing up in the faith, they formally joined the Community
+when they reached the age of discretion. Thus they had known each other from
+early childhood, never in the familiar way common to the children of the
+world, but with the cool, cheerful, casual, wholly impersonal attitude of
+Shaker friendship, a relation seemingly outside of and superior to sex, a
+relation more like that of two astral bodies than the more intimate one of a
+budding Adam and Eve.
+
+When and where had this relationship changed its color and meaning? Neither
+Nathan nor Hetty could have told. For years Nathan had sat at his end of the
+young men's bench at the family or the public meeting, with Hetty exactly
+opposite him at the end of the girls' row, and for years they had looked
+across the dividing space at each other with unstirred pulses. The rows of
+Sisters sat in serene dignity, one bench behind another, and each Sister was
+like unto every other in Nathan's vague, dreamy, boyishly indifferent eyes.
+Some of them were seventy and some seventeen, but each modest figure sat in
+its place with quiet folded hands. The stiff caps hid the hair, whether it was
+silver or gold; the white surplices covered the shoulders and concealed
+beautiful curves as well as angular outlines; the throats were scarcely
+visible, whether they were yellow and wrinkled or young and white. The Sisters
+were simply sisters to fair-haired Nathan, and the Brothers were but brothers
+to little black-eyed Hetty.
+
+Once--was it on a Sunday morning?--Nathan glanced across the separating space
+that is the very essence and sign of Shakerism. The dance had just ceased, and
+there was a long, solemn stillness when God indeed seemed to be in one of His
+holy temples and the earth was keeping silence before Him. Suddenly Hetty grew
+to be something more than one of the figures in a long row: she chained
+Nathan's eye and held it.
+
+"Through her garments the grace of her glowed." He saw that, in spite of the
+way her hair had been cut and stretched back from the forehead, a short dusky
+tendril, softened and coaxed by the summer heat, had made its way mutinously
+beyond the confines of her cap. Her eyes were cast down, but the lashes that
+swept her round young cheek were quite different from any other lashes in the
+Sisters' row. Her breath came and went softly after the exertion of the
+rhythmic movements, stirring the white muslin folds that wrapped her from
+throat to waist. He looked and looked, until his body seemed to be all eyes,
+absolutely unaware of any change in himself; quite oblivious of the fact that
+he was regarding the girl in any new and dangerous way.
+
+The silence continued, long and profound, until suddenly Hetty raised her
+beautiful lashes and met Nathan's gaze, the gaze of a boy just turned to man:
+ardent, warm, compelling. There was a startled moment of recognition, a
+tremulous approach, almost an embrace, of regard; each sent an electric
+current across the protective separating space, the two pairs of eyes met and
+said, "I love you," in such clear tones that Nathan and Hetty marveled that
+the Elder did not hear them. Somebody says that love, like a scarlet spider,
+can spin a thread between two hearts almost in an instant, so fine as to be
+almost invisible, yet it will hold with the tenacity of an iron chain. The
+thread had been spun; it was so delicate that neither Nathan nor Hetty had
+seen the scarlet spider spinning it, but the strength of both would not avail
+to snap the bond that held them together.
+
+The moments passed. Hetty's kerchief rose and fell, rose and fell
+tumultuously, while her face was suffused with color. Nathan's knees quivered
+under him, and when the Elder rose, and they began the sacred march, the lad
+could hardly stand for trembling. He dreaded the moment when the lines of
+Believers would meet, and he and Hetty would walk the length of the long room
+almost beside each other. Could she hear his heart beating, Nathan wondered;
+while Hetty was palpitating with fear lest Nathan see her blushes and divine
+their meaning. Oh, the joy of it, the terror of it, the strange exhilaration
+and the sudden sensation of sin and remorse!
+
+The meeting over, Nathan flung himself on the haymow in the great barn, while
+Hetty sat with her "Synopsis of Shaker Theology" at an open window of the
+girls' building, seeing nothing in the lines of print but visions that should
+not have been there. It was Nathan who felt most and suffered most and was
+most conscious of sin, for Hetty, at first, scarcely knew whither she was
+drifting.
+
+She went into the herb-garden with Susanna one morning during the week that
+followed the fatal Sunday. Many of the plants to be used for seasoning--sage,
+summer savory, sweet marjoram, and the like--were quite ready for gathering.
+As the two women were busy at work, Susanna as full of her thoughts as Hetty
+of hers, the sound of a step was heard brushing the grass of the orchard.
+Hetty gave a nervous start; her cheeks grew so crimson and her breath so short
+that Susanna noticed the change.
+
+"It will be Brother Ansel coming along to the grindstone," Hetty stammered,
+burying her head in the leaves.
+
+"No," Susanna answered, "it is Nathan. He has a long pole with a saw on the
+end. He must be going to take the dead branches off the apple trees; I heard
+Ansel tell him yesterday to do it."
+
+"Yee, that will be it," said Hetty, bending over the plants as if she were
+afraid to look elsewhere.
+
+Nathan came nearer to the herb-garden. He was a tall, stalwart, handsome
+enough fellow, even in his quaint working garb. As the Sisters spun and wove
+the cloth as well as cut and made the men's garments, and as the Brothers
+themselves made the shoes, there was naturally no great air of fashion about
+the Shaker raiment; but Nathan carried it better than most. His skin was fair
+and rosy, the down on his upper lip showed dawning manhood, and when he took
+off his broad-brimmed straw hat and stretched to his full height to reach the
+upper branches of the apple trees, he made a picture of clean, wholesome,
+vigorous youth.
+
+Suddenly Susanna raised her head and surprised Hetty looking at the lad with
+all her heart in her eyes. At the same moment Nathan turned, and before he
+could conceal the telltale ardor of his glance, it had sped to Hetty. With the
+instinct of self-preservation he stooped instantly as if to steady the saw on
+the pole, but it was too late to mend matters: his tale was told so far as
+Susanna was concerned; but it was better she should suspect than one of the
+Believers or Eldress Abby.
+
+Susanna worked on in silent anxiety. The likelihood of such crises as this had
+sometimes crossed her mind, and knowing how frail human nature is, she often
+marveled that instances seemed so infrequent. Her instinct told her that in
+every Community the risk must exist, even though all were doubly warned and
+armed against the temptations that flesh is heir to; yet no hint of danger had
+showed itself during the months in which she had been a member of the Shaker
+family. She had heard the Elder's plea to the young converts to take up "a
+full cross against the flesh"; she had listened to Eldress Abby when she told
+them that the natural life, its thoughts, passions, feelings, and
+associations, must be turned against once and forever; but her heart melted in
+pity for the two poor young things struggling helplessly against instincts of
+which they hardly knew the meaning, so cloistered had been the life they
+lived. The kind, conscientious hands that had fed them would now seem hard and
+unrelenting; the place that had been home would turn to a prison; the life
+that Elder Gray preached, "the life of a purer godliness than can be attained
+by marriage," had seemed difficult, perhaps, but possible; and now how cold
+and hopeless it would appear to these two young, undisciplined, flaming
+hearts!
+
+"Hetty dear, talk to me!" whispered Susanna, softly touching her shoulder, and
+wondering if she could somehow find a way to counsel the girl in her
+perplexity.
+
+Hetty started rebelliously to her feet as Nathan moved away farther into the
+orchard. "If you say a single thing to me, or a word about me to Eldress Abby,
+I'll run away this very day. Nobody has any right to speak to me, and I just
+want to be let alone! It's all very well for you," she went on passionately.
+"What have you had to give up? Nothing but a husband you did n't love and a
+home you did n't want to stay in. Like as not you'll be a Shaker, and they'll
+take you for a saint; but anyway you'll have had your life."
+
+"You are right, Hetty," said Susanna, quietly; "but oh! my dear, the world
+outside isn't such a Paradise for young girls like you, motherless and
+fatherless and penniless. You have a good home here; can't you learn to like
+it?"
+
+"Out in the world people can do as they like and nobody thinks of calling them
+wicked!" sobbed Hetty, flinging herself down, and putting her head in
+Susanna's aproned lap. "Here you've got to live like an angel, and if you
+don't, you've got to confess every wrong thought you've had, when the time
+comes."
+
+"Whatever you do, Hetty, be open and aboveboard; don't be hasty and foolish,
+or you may be sorry forever afterwards."
+
+Hetty's mood changed again suddenly to one of mutiny, and she rose to her
+feet.
+
+"You have n't got any right to interfere with me anyway, Susanna; and if you
+think it's your duty to tell tales, you'll only make matters worse"; and so
+saying she took her basket and fled across the fields like a hunted hare.
+
+That evening, as Hetty left the infirmary, where she had been sent with a
+bottle of liniment for the nursing Sisters, she came upon Nathan standing
+gloomily under the spruce trees near the back of the building. It was eight
+o'clock and quite dark. It had been raining during the late afternoon and the
+trees were still dripping drearily. Hetty came upon Nathan so suddenly, that,
+although he had been in her thoughts, she gave a frightened little cry when he
+drew her peremptorily under the shadow of the branches. The rules that govern
+the Shaker Community are very strict, but in reality the true Believer never
+thinks of them as rules, nor is trammeled by them. They are fixed habits of
+the blood, as common, as natural, as sitting or standing, eating or drinking.
+No Brother is allowed to hold any lengthy interview with a Sister, nor to
+work, walk, or drive with her alone; but these protective customs, which all
+are bound in honor to keep, are too much a matter of everyday life to be
+strange or irksome.
+
+"I must speak to you, Hetty," whispered Nathan. "I cannot bear it any longer
+alone. What shall we do?"
+
+"Do?" echoed Hetty, trembling.
+
+"Yes, _do_." There was no pretense of asking her if she loved or suffered, or
+lived in torture and suspense. They had not uttered a word to each other, but
+their eyes had "shed meanings."
+
+"You know we can't go on like this," he continued rapidly. "We can't eat their
+food, stay alongside of them, pray their prayers and act a lie all the time,
+we can't!"
+
+"Nay, we can't!" said Hetty. "Oh, Nathan, shall we confess all and see if they
+will help us to resist temptation? I know that's what Susanna would want me to
+do, but oh! I should dread it."
+
+"Nay, it is too late," Nathan answered drearily. "They could not help us, and
+we should be held under suspicion forever after."
+
+"I feel so wicked and miserable and unfaithful, I don't know what to do!"
+sobbed Hetty.
+
+"Yee, so do I!" the lad answered. "And I feel bitter against my father, too.
+He brought me here to get rid of me, because he did n't dare leave me on
+somebody's doorstep. He ought to have come back when I was grown a man and
+asked me if I felt inclined to be a Shaker, and if I was good enough to be
+one!"
+
+"And my stepfather would n't have me in the house, so my mother had to give me
+away; but they're both dead, and I'm alone in the world, though I've never
+felt it, because the Sisters are so kind. Now they will hate me--though they
+don't hate anybody."
+
+"You've got me, Hetty! We must go away and be married. We'd better go tonight
+to the minister in Albion."
+
+"What if he would n't do it?"
+
+"Why should n't he? Shakers take no vows, though I feel bound, hand and foot,
+out of gratitude. If any other two young folks went to him, he would marry
+them; and if he refuses, there are two other ministers in Albion, besides two
+more in Buryfield, five miles farther. If they won't marry us tonight, I'll
+leave you in some safe home and we 'll walk to Portland tomorrow. I'm young
+and strong, and I know I can earn our living somehow."
+
+"But we have n't the price of a lodging or a breakfast between us," Hetty said
+tearfully. "Would it be sinful to take some of my basketwork and send back the
+money next week?"
+
+"Yee, it would be so," Nathan answered sternly. "The least we can do is to go
+away as empty-handed as we came. I can work for our breakfast."
+
+"Oh, I can't bear to disappoint Eldress Abby," cried Hetty, breaking anew into
+tears. "She'll say we've run away to live on the lower plane after agreeing to
+crucify Nature and follow the angelic life!"
+
+"I know; but there are five hundred people in Albion all living in marriage,
+and we shan't be the only sinners!" Nathan argued. "Oh, Sister Hetty, dear
+Hetty, keep up your spirits and trust to me!"
+
+Nathan's hand stole out and met Hetty's in its warm clasp, the first hand
+touch that the two ignorant young creatures had ever felt. Nathan's knowledge
+of life had been a journey to the Canterbury Shakers in New Hampshire with
+Brother Issachar; Hetty's was limited to a few drives into Albion village, and
+half a dozen chats with the world's people who came to the Settlement to buy
+basketwork.
+
+"I am not able to bear the Shaker life!" sighed Nathan. "Elder Gray allows
+there be such!"
+
+"Nor I," murmured Hetty. "Eldress Harriet knows I am no saint!"
+
+Hetty's head was now on Nathan's shoulder. The stiff Shaker cap had resisted
+bravely, but the girl's head had yielded to the sweet proximity. Youth called
+to youth triumphantly; the Spirit was unheard, and all the theories of
+celibacy and the angelic life that had been poured into their ears vanished
+into thin air. The thick shade of the spruce tree hid the kiss that would have
+been so innocent, had they not given themselves to the Virgin Church; the
+drip, drip, drip of the branches on their young heads passed unheeded.
+
+Then, one following the other silently along the highroad, hurrying along in
+the shadows of the tall trees, stealing into the edge of the woods, or hiding
+behind a thicket of alders at the fancied sound of a footstep or the distant
+rumble of a wagon, Nathan and Hetty forsook the faith of Mother Ann and went
+out into the world as Adam and Eve left the garden, with the knowledge of good
+and evil implanted in their hearts. The voice of Eldress Abby pursued Hetty in
+her flight like the voice in a dream. She could hear its clear impassioned
+accents, saying, "The children of this world marry; but the children of the
+resurrection do not marry, for they are as the angels." The solemn tones grew
+fainter and fainter as Hetty's steps led her farther and farther away from the
+quiet Shaker village and its drab-clad Sisters, and at last they almost died
+into silence, because Nathan's voice was nearer and Nathan's voice was dearer.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Concerning Backsliders
+
+
+There was no work in the herb-garden now, but there was never a moment from
+dawn till long after dusk when the busy fingers of the Shaker Sisters were
+still. When all else failed there was the knitting: socks for the Brothers and
+stockings for the Sisters and socks and stockings of every size for the
+children. One of the quaint sights of the Settlement to Susanna was the clump
+of young Sisters on the porch of the girls' building, knitting, knitting, in
+the afternoon sun. Even little Shaker Jane and Mary, Maria and Lucinda, had
+their socks in hand, and plied their short knitting-needles soberly and not
+unskillfully. The sight of their industry incited the impetuous Sue to effort,
+and under the patient tutelage of Sister Martha she mastered the gentle art.
+Susanna never forgot the hour when, coming from her work in the seed-room, she
+crossed the grass with a message to Martha, and saw the group of children and
+girls on the western porch, a place that caught every ray of afternoon sun,
+the last glint of twilight, and the first hint of sunset glow. Sister Martha
+had been reading the Sabbath-School lesson for the next day, and as Susanna
+neared the building, Martha's voice broke into a hymn. Falteringly the girls'
+voices followed the lead, uncertain at first of words or tune, but gaining
+courage and strength as they went on:--
+
+  "As the waves of the mighty ocean
+   Gospel love we will circulate,
+  And as we give, in due proportion,
+   We of the heavenly life partake.
+  Heavenly Life, Glorious Life,
+   Resurrecting, Soul-Inspiring,
+  Regenerating Gospel Life,
+   It leadeth away from all sin and strife."
+
+ The clear, innocent treble sounded sweetly in the virgin stillness and
+solitude of the Settlement, and as Susanna drew closer she stopped under a
+tree to catch the picture--Sister Martha, grave, tall, discreet, singing with
+all her soul and marking time with her hands, so accustomed to the upward and
+downward movement of the daily service. The straight, plain dresses were as
+fresh and smooth as perfect washing could make them, and the round childlike
+faces looked quaint and sweet with the cropped hair tucked under the stiff
+little caps. Sue was seated with Mary and Jane on the steps, and Susanna saw
+with astonishment that her needles were moving to and fro and she was knitting
+as serenely and correctly as a mother in Israel; singing, too, in a delicate
+little treble that was like a skylark's morning note. Susanna could hear her
+distinctly as she delightedly flung out the long words so dear to her soul and
+so difficult to dull little Jane and Mary:--
+
+  "Resurrecting, Soul-Inspiring, 
+  Regenerating Gospel Life,
+   It leadeth away from all sin and strife."
+
+ Jane's cap was slightly unsettled, causing its wearer to stop knitting now
+and then and pull it forward or push it back; and in one of these little
+feminine difficulties Susanna saw Sue reach forward and deftly transfer the
+cap to her own head. Jane was horrified, but rather slow to wrath and equally
+slow in ingenuity. Sue looked a delicious Shaker with her delicate face, her
+lovely eyes, and her yellow hair grown into soft rings; and quite intoxicated
+with her cap, her knitting, and the general air of holiness so unexpectedly
+emanating from her, she moved her little hands up and down, as the tune rose
+and fell, in a way that would have filled Eldress Abby with joy. Susanna's
+heart beat fast, and she wondered for a moment, as she went back to her room,
+whether she could ever give Sue a worldly childhood more free from danger than
+the life she was now living. She found letters from Aunt Louisa and Jack on
+reaching her room, and they lay in her lap under a pile of towels, to be read
+and reread while her busy needle flew over the coarse crash. Sue stole in
+quietly, kissed her mother's cheek, and sat down on her stool by the window,
+marveling, with every "under" of the needle and "over" of the yarn, that it
+was she, Sue Hathaway, who was making a real stocking.
+
+Jack's pen was not that of an especially ready writer, but he had a practical
+way of conveying considerable news. His present contributions, when freed from
+their phonetic errors and spelled in Christian fashion, read somewhat as
+follows:
+
+Father says I must write to you every week, even if I make him do without, so
+I will. I am well, and so is Aunt Louisa, and any boy that lives with her has
+to toe the mark, I tell you; but she is good and has fine things to eat every
+meal. What did Sue get for her birthday? I got a book from father and one from
+Aunt Louisa and the one from you that you told her to buy. It is queer that
+people will give a boy books when he has only one knife, and that a broken
+one. There's a book prize to be given at the school, and I am pretty afraid I
+will get that, too; it would be just my luck. Teachers think about nothing but
+books and what good they do, but I heard of a boy that had a grand knife with
+five sharp blades and a corkscrew, and in a shipwreck he cut all the ropes, so
+the sail came down that was carrying them on to the rocks, and then by boring
+a hole with his corkscrew all the water leaked out of the ship that had been
+threatening to sink the sailors. I could use a little pocket money, as Aunt
+Louisa keeps me short.
+... I have been spending Sunday with father, and had a pretty good time, not
+so very. Father will take me about more when he stops going to the store,
+which will be next week for good. The kitchen floor is new painted, and Ellen
+says it sticks, and Aunt Louisa is going to make Ellen clean house in case you
+come home. Do you like where you are? Our teacher told the girls' teacher it
+seemed a long stay for any one who had a family, and the boys at school call
+me a half orphan and say my mother has left me and so my father has to board
+me in the country. My money is run out again. I sat down in a puddle this
+afternoon, but it dried up pretty quick and did n't hurt my clothes, so no
+more from your son
+                         JACK.
+
+This was the sort of message that had been coming to Susanna of late, bringing
+up little pictures of home duties and responsibilities, homely tasks and
+trials. "John giving up the store for good"; what did that mean? Had he gone
+from bad to worse in the solitude that she had hoped might show him the
+gravity of his offenses, the error of his ways? In case she should die, what
+then would become of the children? Would Louisa accept the burden of Jack, for
+whom she had never cared? Would the Shakers take Sue? She would be safe;
+perhaps she would always be happy; but brother and sister would be divided and
+brought up as strangers. Would little Sue, grown to big Sue, say some time or
+other, "My mother renounced the world for herself, but what right had she to
+renounce it for me? Why did she rob me of the dreams of girlhood and the
+natural hopes of women, when I was too young to give consent?" These and other
+unanswerable questions continually drifted through Susanna's mind, disturbing
+its balance and leaving her like a shuttlecock bandied to and fro between
+conflicting blows.
+
+"Mardie," came a soft little voice from across the room; "Mardie, what is a
+backslider?"
+
+"Where did you hear that long word, Sue?" asked Susanna, rousing herself from
+her dream.
+
+"'T is n't so long as 'regenerating' and more easier."
+
+"Regenerating means 'making over,' you know."
+
+"There'd ought to be children's words and grownup words,--that's what I
+think," said Sue, decisively; "but what does 'backslider' mean?"
+
+"A backslider is one who has been climbing up a hill and suddenly begins to
+slip back."
+
+"Does n't his feet take hold right, or why does he slip?"
+
+"Perhaps he can't manage his feet;--perhaps they just won't climb." 295
+
+ "Yes, or p'raps he just does n't want to climb any more; but it must be
+frightensome, sliding backwards."
+
+"I suppose it is."
+
+"Is it wicked?"
+
+"Why, yes, it is, generally; perhaps always."
+
+"Brother Nathan and Sister Hetty were backsliders; Sister Tabitha said so. She
+told Jane never to speak their names again any more than if they was dead."
+
+"Then you had better not speak of them, either."
+
+"There's so many things better not to speak of in the world, sometimes I think
+'t would be nicer to be an angel."
+
+"Nicer, perhaps, but one has to be very good to be an angel."
+
+"Backsliders could n't be angels, I s'pose?"
+
+"Not while they were backsliders; but perhaps they'd begin to climb again, and
+then in time they might grow to be angels."
+
+"I should n't think likely," remarked Sue, decisively, clicking her needles as
+one who could settle most spiritual problems in a jiffy. "I think the sliding
+kind is diff'rent from the climbing kind, and they don't make easy angels."
+
+A long pause followed this expression of opinion, this simple division of the
+human race, at the start, into sheep and goats. Then presently the untiring
+voice broke the stillness again.
+
+"Nathan and Hetty slid back when they went away from here. Did we backslide
+when we left Fardie and Jack?"
+
+"I'm not sure but that we did," said poor Susanna.
+
+"There's children-Shakers, and brother-and-sister Shakers, but no father-and-
+mother Shakers?"
+
+"No; they think they can do just as much good in the world without being
+mothers and fathers."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"Ye-es, I believe I do."
+
+"Well, are you a truly Shaker, or can't you be till you wear a cap?"
+
+"I'm not a Shaker yet, Sue."
+
+"You're just only a mother?"
+
+"Yes, that's about all."
+
+"Maybe we'd better go back to where there's not so many Sisters and more
+mothers, so you 'll have somebody to climb togedder with?"
+
+"I could climb here, Sue, and so could you."
+
+"Yes, but who'll Fardie and Jack climb with? I wish they'd come and see us.
+Brother Ansel would make Fardie laugh, and Jack would love farmwork, and we'd
+all be so happy. I miss Fardie awfully! He did n't speak to me much, but I
+liked to look at his curly hair and think how lovely it would be if he did
+take notice of me and play with me."
+
+A sob from Susanna brought Sue, startled, to her side.
+
+"You break my heart, Sue! You break it every day with the things you say.
+Don't you love me, Sue?"
+
+"More'n tongue can tell!" cried Sue, throwing herself into her mother's arms.
+"Don't cry, darling Mardie! I won't talk any more, not for days and days! Let
+me wipe your poor eyes. Don't let Elder Gray see you crying, or he'll think
+I've been naughty. He's just going in downstairs to see Eldress Abby. Was it
+wrong what I said about backsliding, or what, Mardie? We'll help each udder
+climb, an' then we'll go home an' help poor lonesome Fardie; shall we?"
+
+
+"Abby!" called Elder Gray, stepping into the entry of the Office Building.
+
+"Yee, I'm coming," Eldress Abby answered from the stairway. "Go right out and
+sit down on the bench by the door, where I can catch a few minutes' more light
+for my darning; the days seem to be growing short all to once. Did Lemuel have
+a good sale of basket-work at the mountains? Rosetta has n't done so well for
+years at Old Orchard. We seem to be prospering in every material direction,
+Daniel, but my heart is heavy somehow, and I have to be instant in prayer to
+keep from discouragement."
+
+"It has n't been an altogether good year with us spiritually," confessed
+Daniel; "perhaps we needed chastening."
+
+"If we needed it, we've received it," Abby ejaculated, as she pushed her
+darning-ball into the foot of a stocking. "Nothing has happened since I came
+here thirty years ago that has troubled me like the running away of Nathan and
+Hetty. If they had been new converts, we should have thought the good seed had
+n't got fairly rooted, but those children were brought to us when Nathan was
+eleven and Hetty nine."
+
+"I well remember, for the boy's father and the girl's mother came on the same
+train; a most unusual occurrence to receive two children in one day."
+
+"I have cause to remember Hetty in her first month, for she was as wild as a
+young hawk. She laughed in meeting the first Sunclay, and when she came back,
+I told her to sit behind me in silence for half an hour while I was reading my
+Bible. 'Be still now, Hetty, and labor to repent,' I said. When the time was
+up, she said in a meek little mite of a voice, 'I think I'm least in the
+Kingdom now, Eldress Abby!' 'Then run outdoors,' I said. She kicked up her
+heels like a colt and was through the door in a second. Not long afterwards I
+put my hands behind me to tie my apron tighter, and if that child had n't
+taken my small scissors lying on the table and cut buttonholes all up and down
+my strings, hundreds of them, while she was 'laboring to repent.'"
+
+Elder Gray smiled reminiscently, though he had often heard the story before.
+"Neither of the children came from godly families," he said, "but at least the
+parents never interfered with us nor came here putting false ideas into their
+children's heads."
+
+"That's what I say," continued Abby; "and now, after ten years' training and
+discipline in the angelic life, Hetty being especially promising, to think of
+their going away together, and worse yet, being married in Albion village
+right at our very doors; I don't hardly dare to go to bed nights for fear of
+hearing in the morning that some of the other young folks have been led astray
+by this foolish performance of Hetty's; I know it was Hetty's fault; Nathan
+never had ingenuity enough to think and plan it all out."
+
+"Nay, nay, Abby, don't be too hard on the girl; I've watched Nathan closely,
+and he has been in a dangerous and unstable state, even as long ago as his
+last confession; but this piece of backsliding, grievous as it is, does n't
+cause me as much sorrow as the fall of Brother Ephraim. To all appearance he
+had conquered his appetite, and for five years he has led a sober life. I had
+even great hopes of him for the ministry, and suddenly, like a great cloud in
+the blue sky, has come this terrible visitation, this reappearance of the old
+Adam. 'Ephraim has returned to his idols.'"
+
+"How have you decided to deal with him, Daniel?"
+
+"It is his first offense since he cast in his lot with us; we must rebuke,
+chastise, and forgive."
+
+"Yee, yee, I agree to that; but how if he makes us the laughing-stock of the
+community and drags our sacred banner in the dust? We can't afford to have one
+of our order picked up in the streets by the world's people."
+
+"Have the world's people found an infallible way to keep those of their order
+out of the gutters?" asked Elder Gray. "Ephraim seems repentant; if he is
+willing to try again, we must be willing to do as much."
+
+"Yee, Daniel, you are right. Another matter that causes me anxiety is Susanna.
+I never yearned for a soul as I yearn for hers! She has had the advantage of
+more education and more reading than most of us have ever enjoyed; she's
+gifted in teaching and she wins the children. She's discreet and spiritually
+minded; her life in the world, even with the influence of her dissipated
+husband, has n't really stained, only humbled her; she would make such a
+Shaker, if she was once 'convinced,' as we have n't gathered in for years and
+years; but I fear she's slipping, slipping away, Daniel!"
+
+"What makes you feel so now, particularly?"
+
+"She's diff'rent as time goes on. She's had more letters from that place where
+her boy is; she cries nights, and though she does n't relax a mite with her
+work, she drags about sometimes like a bird with one wing."
+
+Elder Daniel took off his broadbrimmed hat to cool his forehead and hair,
+lifting his eyes to the first pale stars that were trembling in the sky,
+hesitating in silver and then quietly deepening into gold.
+
+Brother Ansel was a Believer because he had no particular love for the world
+and no great susceptibility to its temptations; but what had drawn Daniel Gray
+from the open sea into this quiet little backwater of a Shaker Settlement?
+After an adventurous early life, in which, as if youth-intoxicated, he had
+plunged from danger to danger, experience to experience, he suddenly found
+himself in a society of which he had never so much as heard, a company of
+celibate brothers and sisters holding all goods and possessions in common, and
+trying to live the "angelic life" on earth. Illness detained him for a month
+against his will, but at the end of that time he had joined the Community; and
+although it had been twenty-five years since his gathering in, he was still
+steadfast in the faith.
+
+His character was of puritanical sternness; he was a strict disciplinarian,
+and insisted upon obedience to the rules of Shaker life, "the sacred laws of
+Zion," as he was wont to term them. He magnified his office, yet he was of a
+kindly disposition easily approached by children, and not without a quaint
+old-time humor.
+
+There was a long pause while the two faithful leaders of the little flock were
+absorbed in thought; then the Elder said: "Susanna's all you say, and the
+child, well, if she could be purged of her dross, I never saw a creature
+better fitted to live the celestial life; but we must not harbor any divided
+hearts here. When the time comes, we must dismiss her with our blessing."
+
+"Yee, I suppose so," said Eldress Abby, loyally, but it was with a sigh. Had
+she and Tabitha been left to their own instincts, they would have gone out
+into the highways and hedges, proselyting with the fervor of Mother Ann's day
+and generation.
+
+"After all, Abby," said the Elder, rising to take his leave, still in a sort
+of mild trance,"after all, Abby, I suppose the Shakers don't own the whole of
+heaven. I'd like to think so, but I can't. It's a big place, and it belongs to
+God."
+
+
+
+ 
+
+IX
+
+Love Manifold
+
+
+The woods on the shores of Massabesic Pond were stretches of tapestry, where
+every shade of green and gold, olive and brown, orange and scarlet, melted the
+one into the other. The somber pines made a deep-toned background; patches of
+sumach gave their flaming crimson; the goldenrod grew rank and tall in
+glorious profusion, and the maples outside the Office Building were balls of
+brilliant carmine. The air was like crystal, and the landscape might have been
+bathed in liquid amber, it was so saturated with October yellow.
+
+Susanna caught her breath as she threw her chamber window wider open in the
+early morning; for the greater part of the picture had been painted during the
+frosty night.
+
+"Throw your little cape round your shoulders and come quickly, Sue!" she
+exclaimed.
+
+The child ran to her side. "Oh, what a goldy, goldy morning!" she cried.
+
+One crimson leaf with a long heavy stem that acted as a sort of rudder, came
+down to the windowsill with a sidelong scooping flight, while two or three
+gayly painted ones, parted from the tree by the same breeze, floated airily
+along as if borne on unseen wings, finally alighting on Sue's head and
+shoulders like tropical birds.
+
+"You cried in the night, Mardie!" said Sue. "I heard you snifferling and
+getting up for your hank'chief; but I did n't speak 'cause it's so dreadful to
+be _catched_ crying."
+
+"Kneel down beside me and give me part of your cape," her mother answered.
+"I'm going to let my sad heart fly right out of the window into those
+beautiful trees."
+
+"And maybe a glad heart will fly right in!" the child suggested.
+
+"Maybe. Oh! we must cuddle close and be still; Elder Gray's going to sit down
+under the great maple; and do you see, all the Brothers seem to be up early
+this morning, just as we are?"
+
+"More love, Elder Gray!" called Issachar, on his way to the toolhouse.
+
+"More love, Brother Issachar!"
+
+"More love, Brother Ansel!"
+
+"More love, Brother Calvin!"
+
+"More love! .... More love! .... More love!" So the quaint but not uncommon
+Shaker greeting passed from Brother to Brother; and as Tabitha and Martha and
+Rosetta met on their way to dairy and laundry and seed-house, they, too,
+hearing the salutation, took up the refrain, and Susanna and Sue heard again
+from the women's voices that beautiful morning wish, "More love! More love!"
+speeding from heart to heart and lip to lip.
+
+Mother and child were very quiet.
+
+"More love, Sue!" said Susanna, clasping her closely.
+
+"More love, Mardie!" whispered the child, smiling and entering into the spirit
+of the salutation. "Let's turn our heads Farnham way! I'll take Jack and you
+take Fardie, and we'll say togedder, 'More love'; shall we?"
+
+"More love, John."
+
+"More love, Jack."
+
+The words floated out over the trees in the woman's trembling voice and the
+child's treble.
+
+"Elder Gray looks tired though he's just got up," Sue continued.
+
+"He is not strong," replied her mother, remembering Brother Ansel's statement
+that the Elder "wa'n't diseased anywheres, but did n't have no durability."
+
+"The Elder would have a lovely lap," Sue remarked presently.
+
+"_What_?"
+
+"A nice lap to sit in. Fardie has a nice lap, too, and Uncle Joel Atterbury,
+but not Aunt Louisa; she lets you slide right off; it's a bony, hard lap. I
+love Elder Gray, and I climbed on his lap one day. He put me right down, but
+I'm sure he likes children. I wish I could take right hold of his hand and
+walk all over the farm, but he would n't let me, I s'pose.-- _More_love_,
+_Elder_Gray_!" she cried suddenly, bobbing up above the windowsill and shaking
+her fairy hand at him.
+
+The Elder looked up at the sound of the glad voice. No human creature could
+have failed to smile back into the roguish face or have treated churlishly the
+sweet, confident little greeting. The heart of a real man must have an
+occasional throb of the father, and when Daniel Gray rose from his seat under
+the maple and called, "More love, child!" there was something strange and
+touching in his tone. He moved away from the tree to his morning labors with
+the consciousness of something new to conquer. Long, long ago he had risen
+victorious above many of the temptations that flesh is heir to. Women were his
+good friends, his comrades, his sisters; they no longer troubled the waters of
+his soul; but here was a child who stirred the depths; who awakened the
+potential father in him so suddenly and so strongly that he longed for the
+sweetness of a human tie that could bind him to her. But the current of the
+Elder's being was set towards sacrifice and holiness, and the common joys of
+human life he felt could never and must never be his; so he went to the daily
+round, the common task, only a little paler, a little soberer than was his
+wont.
+
+"More love, Martha!" said Susanna when she met Martha a little later in the
+day.
+
+"More love, Susanna!" Martha replied cheerily. "You heard our Shaker greeting,
+I see! It was the beautiful weather, the fine air and glorious colors, that
+brought the inspiration this morning, I guess! It took us all out of doors,
+and then it seemed to get into the blood. Besides, tomorrow's the Day of
+Sacrifice, and that takes us all on to the mountaintops of feeling. There have
+been times when I had to own up to a lack of love."
+
+"You, Martha, who have such wonderful influence over the children, such
+patience, such affection!"
+
+"It was n't always so. When I was first put in charge of the children, I did
+n't like the work. They did n't respond to me somehow, and when they were out
+of my sight they were ugly and disobedient. My natural mother, Maria Holmes,
+took care of the girls' clothing. One day she said to me, 'Martha, do you love
+the girls?'
+
+"'Some of them are very unlovely,' I replied.
+
+"'I know that,' she said, 'but you can never help them unless you love them.'
+
+"I thought mother very critical, for I strove scrupulously to do my duty. A
+few days after this the Elder said to me: 'Martha, do you love the girls?' I
+responded, 'Not very much.'
+
+"'You cannot save them unless you love them,' he said. "Then I answered, 'I
+will labor for a gift of love.' "When the work of the day was over, and the
+girls were in bed, I would take off my shoes and spend several hours of the
+night walking the floor, kneeling in prayer that I might obtain the coveted
+gift. For five weeks I did this without avail, when suddenly one night when
+the moon was full and I was kneeling by the window, a glory seemed to
+overshadow the crest of a high mountain in the distance. I thought I heard a
+voice say: '_Martha, I baptize you into the spirit of love!_' I sat there
+trembling for more than an hour, and when I rose, I felt that I could love the
+meanest human being that ever walked the earth. I have never had any trouble
+with children since that night of the vision. They seem different to me, and I
+dare say I am different to them."
+
+"I wish I could see visions!" exclaimed Susanna. "Oh, for a glory that would
+speak to me and teach me truth and duty! Life is all mist, whichever way I
+turn. I'd like to be lifted on to a high place where I could see clearly."
+
+She leaned against the frame of the open kitchen door, her delicate face
+quivering with emotion and longing, her attitude simplicity and
+unconsciousness itself. The baldest of Shaker prose turned to purest poetry
+when Susanna dipped it in the alembic of her own imagination.
+
+"Labor for the gift of sight!" said Martha, who believed implicitly in spirits
+and visions. "Labor this very night."
+
+It must be said for Susanna that she had never ceased laboring in her own way
+for many days. The truth was that she felt herself turning from marriage. She
+had lived now so long in the society of men and women who regarded it as an
+institution not compatible with the highest spiritual development that
+unconsciously her point of view had changed; changed all the more because she
+had been so unhappy with the man she had chosen. Curiously enough, and
+unfortunately enough for Susanna Hathaway's peace of mind, the greater
+aversion she felt towards the burden of the old life, towards the irksomeness
+of guiding a weaker soul, towards the claims of husband on wife, the stronger
+those claims appeared. If they had never been assumed!--Ah, but they had;
+there was the rub! One sight of little Sue sleeping tranquilly beside her; one
+memory of rebellious, faulty Jack; one vision of John, either as needing or
+missing her, the rightful woman, or falling deeper in the wiles of the wrong
+one for very helplessness;--any of these changed Susanna the would-be saint,
+in an instant, into Susanna the wife and mother.
+
+"_Speak to me for Thy Compassion's sake_," she prayed from the little book of
+Confessions that her mother had given her. "_I will follow after Thy Voice!_"
+
+"Would you betray your trust?" asked conscience.
+
+"No, not intentionally."
+
+"Would you desert your post?"
+
+"Never, willingly."
+
+"You have divided the family; taken a little quail bird out of the home-nest
+and left sorrow behind you. Would God justify you in that?"
+
+For the first time Susanna's "No" rang clearly enough for her to hear it
+plainly; for the first time it was followed by no vague misgivings, no
+bewilderment, no unrest or indecision. "_I turn hither and hither; Thy
+purposes are hid from me, but I commend my soul to Thee_!"
+
+Then a sentence from the dear old book came into her memory: "_And thy dead
+things shall revive, and thy weak things shall be made whole_."
+
+She listened, laying hold of every word, till the nervous clenching of her
+hands subsided, her face relaxed into peace. Then she lay down beside Sue,
+creeping close to her for the warmth and comfort and healing of her innocent
+touch, and, closing her eyes serenely, knew no more till the morning broke,
+the Sabbath morning of Confession Day.
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Brother and Sister
+
+
+If Susanna's path had grown more difficult, more filled with anxieties, so had
+John Hathaway's. The protracted absence of his wife made the gossips conclude
+that the break was a final one. Jack was only half contented with his aunt,
+and would be fairly mutinous in the winter, while Louisa's general attitude
+was such as to show clearly that she only kept the boy for Susanna's sake.
+
+Now and then there was a terrifying hint of winter in the air, and the days of
+Susanna's absence seemed eternal to John Hathaway. Yet he was a man about whom
+there would have been but one opinion: that when deprived of a rather superior
+and high-minded wife and the steadying influence of home and children, he
+would go completely "to the dogs," whither he seemed to be hurrying when
+Susanna's wifely courage failed. That he had done precisely the opposite and
+the unexpected thing, shows us perhaps that men are not on the whole as
+capable of estimating the forces of their fellow men as is God the maker of
+men, who probably expects something of the worst of them up to the very last.
+
+It was at the end of a hopeless Sunday when John took his boy back to his
+aunt's towards night. He wondered drearily how a woman dealt with a ten-year-
+old boy who from sunrise to sunset had done every mortal thing he ought not to
+have done, and had left undone everything that he had been told to do; and, as
+if to carry out the very words of the church service, neither was there any
+health in him; for he had an inflamed throat and a whining, irritable,
+discontented temper that could be borne only by a mother, a father being
+wholly inadequate and apparently never destined for the purpose.
+
+It was a mild evening late in October, and Louisa sat on the porch with her
+pepper-and-salt shawl on and a black wool "rigolette" tied over her head.
+Jack, very sulky and unresigned, was dispatched to bed under the care of the
+one servant, who was provided with a cupful of vinegar, salt, and water, for a
+gargle. John had more than an hour to wait for a returning train to Farnham,
+and although ordinarily he would have preferred to spend the time in the
+silent and unreproachful cemetery rather than in the society of his sister
+Louisa, he was too tired and hopeless to do anything but sit on the steps and
+smoke fitfully in the semidarkness. Louisa was much as usual. She well knew--
+who better?--her brother's changed course of life, but neither encouragement
+nor compliment were in her line. Why should a man be praised for living a
+respectable life? That John had really turned a sort of moral somersault and
+come up a different creature, she did not realize in the least, nor the
+difficulties surmounted in such a feat; but she did give him credit secretly
+for turning about face and behaving far more decently than she could ever have
+believed possible. She had no conception of his mental torture at the time,
+but if he kept on doing well, she privately intended to inform Susanna and at
+least give her a chance of trying him again, if absence had diminished her
+sense of injury. One thing that she did not know was that John was on the eve
+of losing his partnership. When Jack had said that his father was not going
+back to the store the next week, she thought it meant simply a vacation.
+Divided hearts, broken vows, ruined lives she could bear the sight of these
+with considerable philosophy, but a lost income was a very different, a very
+tangible thing. She almost lost her breath when her brother knocked the ashes
+from his meerschaum and curtly told her of the proposed change in his business
+relations.
+
+"I don't know what I shall do yet," he said, "whether I shall set up for
+myself in a small way or take a position in another concern,--that is, if I
+can get one--my stock of popularity seems to be pretty low just now in
+Farnham. I'd move away tomorrow and cut the whole gossipy, deceitful,
+hypocritical lot of 'em if I was n't afraid of closing the house and so losing
+Susanna, if she should ever feel like coming back to us."
+
+These words and the thought back of them were too much for John's self-
+control. The darkness helped him and his need of comfort was abject. Suddenly
+he burst out, "Oh, Louisa, for heaven's sake, give me a little crumb of
+comfort, if you have any! How can you stand like a stone all these months and
+see a man suffering as I have suffered, without giving him a word?"
+
+"You brought it on yourself," said Louisa, in self-exculpation.
+
+"Does that make it any easier to bear?" cried John. "Don't you suppose I
+remember it every hour, and curse myself the more? You know perfectly well
+that I'm a different man today. I don't know what made me change; it was as if
+something had been injected into my blood that turned me against everything I
+had liked best before. I hate the sight of the men and the women I used to go
+with, not because they are any worse, but because they remind me of what I
+have lost. I have reached the point now where I have got to have news of
+Susanna or go and shoot myself."
+
+"That would be about the only piece of foolishness you have n't committed
+already!" replied Louisa, with a biting satire that would have made any man
+let go of the trigger in case he had gone so far as to begin pulling it.
+
+"Where is she?" John went on, without anger at her sarcasm. "Where is she, how
+is she, what is she living on, is she well, is she just as bitter as she was
+at first, does she ever speak of coming back? Tell me something, tell me
+anything. I will know something. I say I _will_!"
+
+Louisa's calm demeanor began to show a little agitation, for she was not used
+to the sight of emotion. "I can't tell you where Susanna is, for I made her a
+solemn promise I would n't unless you or Jack were in danger of some kind; but
+I don't mind telling you this much, that she's well and in the safest kind of
+a shelter, for she's been living from the first in a Shaker Settlement."
+
+"Shaker Settlement!" cried John, starting up from his seat on the steps.
+"What's that? I know Shaker egg-beaters and garden-seeds and rocking-chairs
+and oh, yes, I remember their religion's against marriage. That's the worst
+thing you could have told me; that ends all hope; if they once get hold of a
+woman like Susanna, they'll never let go of her; if they don't believe in a
+woman's marrying a good man, they'd never let her go back to a bad one. Oh, if
+I had only known this before; if only you'd told me, Louisa, perhaps I could
+have done something. Maybe they take vows or sign contracts, and so I have
+lost her altogether."
+
+"I don't know much about their beliefs, and Susanna never explained them,"
+returned Louisa, nervously "but now that you've got something to offer her,
+why don't you write and ask her to come back to you? I'll send your letter to
+her."
+
+"I don't dare, Louisa, I don't dare," groaned John, leaning his head against
+one of the pillars of the porch. "I can't tell you the fear I have of Susanna
+after the way I've neglected her this last year. If she should come in at the
+gate this minute, I could n't meet her eyes; if you'd read the letter she left
+me, you'd feel the same way. I deserved it, to the last word, but oh, it was
+like so many separate strokes of lightning, and every one of them burned. It
+was nothing but the truth, but it was cut in with a sharp sword. Unless she
+should come back to me of her own accord, and she never will, I have n't got
+the courage to ask her; just have n't got the courage, that's all there is to
+say about it." And here John buried his head in his hands.
+
+A very queer thing happened to Louisa Banks at this moment. A half-second
+before she would have murmured:
+
+ "This rock shall fly From its firm base as soon as I!"
+
+when all at once, and without warning, a strange something occurred in the
+organ which she had always regarded and her opinion had never yet been
+questioned as a good, tough, love-tight heart. First there was a flutter and a
+tremor running all along her spine; then her eyes filled; then a lump rose in
+her throat and choked her; then words trembled on her tongue and refused to be
+uttered; then something like a bird--could it have been the highly respectable
+good-as-new heart?--throbbed under her black silk Sunday waist; then she grew
+like wax from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet; then in a
+twinkling, and so unconsciously as to be unashamed of it, she became a sister.
+
+You have seen a gray November morning melt into an Indian summer noon? Louisa
+Banks was like that, when, at the sight of a man in sore trouble, sympathy was
+born in her to soften the rockiness of her original makeup.
+
+"There, there, John, don't be so downhearted," she stammered, drawing her
+chair closer and putting her hand on his shoulder. "We'll bring it round
+right, you see if we don't. You've done the most yourself already, for I'm
+proud of the way you've acted, stiffening right up like an honest man and
+showing you've got some good sensible Hathaway stuff in you, after all, and
+ain't ashamed to turn your back on your evil ways. Susanna ain't one to refuse
+forgiveness."
+
+"She forgave for a long time, but she refused at last. Why should she change
+now?" John asked.
+
+"You remember she has n't heard a single word from you, nor about you, in that
+out-of-the-way place where she's been living," said Louisa, consolingly. "She
+thinks you're the same as you were, or worse, maybe. Perhaps she's waiting for
+you to make some sign through me, for she don't know that you care anything
+about her, or are pining to have her back."
+
+"Such a woman as Susanna must know better than that!" cried John. "She ought
+to know that when a man got used to living with anybody like her, he could
+never endure any other kind."
+
+"How should she know all that? Jack's been writing to her and telling her the
+news for the last few weeks, though I have n't said a word about you because I
+did n't know how long your reformation was going to hold out; but I won't let
+the grass grow under my feet now, till I tell her just how things stand!"
+
+"You're a good woman, Louisa; I don't see why I never noticed it before."
+
+"It's because I've been concealing my goodness too much. Stay here with me
+tonight and don't go back to brood in that dismal, forsaken house. We'll see
+how Jack is in the morning, and if he's all right, take him along with you,
+so's to be all there together if Susanna comes back this week, as I kind of
+hope she will. Make Ellen have the house all nice and cheerful from top to
+bottom, with a good supper ready to put on the table the night she comes.
+You'd better pick your asters and take 'em in for the parlor, then I'll cut
+the chrysanthemums for you in the middle of the week. The day she comes I'll
+happen in, and stay to dinner if you find it's going to be mortifying for you;
+but if everything is as I expect it will be, and the way Susanna always did
+have things, I'll make for home and leave you to yourselves. Susanna ain't one
+to nag and hector and triumph over a man when he's repented."
+
+John hugged Louisa, pepper-and-salt shawl, black rigolctte, and all, when she
+finished this unprecedented speech; and when he went to sleep that night in
+the old north chamber, the one he and Louisa had been born in, the one his
+father and mother had died in, it was with a little smile of hope on his lips.
+
+  Set her place at hearth and board
+  As it used to be!
+
+These were the last words that crossed his waking thoughts. Before Louisa went
+to her own bed, she wrote one of her brief and characteristic epistles to
+Susanna, but it did not reach her, for the "hills of home" had called John's
+wife so insistently on that Sunday, that the next day found her on her way
+back to Farnham.
+
+Dear Susanna [so the letter read], There's a new man in your house at Farnham.
+His name is John Hathaway, but he's made all over and it was high time. I say
+it's the hand of God! He won't own up that it is, but I'm letting him alone,
+for I've done quarreling, though I don't like to see a man get religion and
+deny it, for all the world like Peter in the New Testament. If you have n't
+used up the last one of your seventy-times-sevens, I think you'd better come
+back and forgive your husband. If you don't, you'd better send for your son.
+I'm willing to bear the burdens the Lord intends specially for me, but Jack
+belongs to you, and a good-sized heavy burden he is, too, for his age. I can't
+deny that, if he is a Hathaway. I think he's the kind of a boy that ought to
+be put in a barrel and fed through the bunghole till he grows up; but of
+course I'm not used to children's ways.
+
+Be as easy with John at first as you can. I know you 'll say _I_ never was
+with my husband, but he was different, he got to like a bracing treatment,
+Adlai did. Many's the time he said to me, "Louisa, when you make up our minds,
+I'm always contented." But John is n't made that way. He's a changed man; now,
+what we've got to do is to _keep_ him changed. He does n't bear you any grudge
+for leaving him, so he won't reproach you.
+
+Hoping to see you before long, I am,
+
+                Yours as usual,
+                             Louisa Banks.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+"The Open Door"
+
+
+On the Saturday evening before the yearly Day of Sacrifice the spiritual heads
+of each Shaker family called upon all the Believers to enter heartily next day
+into the humiliations and blessings of open confession.
+
+The Sabbath dawns upon an awed and solemn household. Footfalls are hushed, the
+children's chatter is stilled, and all go to the morning meal in silence.
+There is a strange quiet, but it is not sadness; it is a hush, as when in
+Israel's camp the silver trumpets sounded and the people stayed in their
+tents. "Then," Elder Gray explained to Susanna, "a summons comes to each
+Believer, for all have been searching the heart and scanning the life of the
+months past. Softly the one called goes to the door of the one appointed by
+the Divine Spirit, the human representative who is to receive the gift of the
+burdened soul. Woman confesses to woman, man to man; it is the open door that
+leads to God."
+
+Susanna lifted Eldress Abby's latch and stood in her strong, patient presence;
+then all at once she knelt impulsively and looked up into her serene eyes.
+
+"Do you come as a Believer, Susanna?" tremblingly asked the Eldress.
+
+"No, Eldress Abby. I come as a child of the world who wants to go back to her
+duty, and hopes to do it better than she ever did before. She ought to be able
+to, because you have chastened her pride, taught her the lesson of patience,
+strengthened her will, purified her spirit, and cleansed her soul from
+bitterness and wrath. I waited till afternoon when all the confessions were
+over. May I speak now?"
+
+Eldress Abby bowed, but she looked weak and stricken and old.
+
+"I had something you would have called a vision last night, but I think of it
+as a dream, and I know just what led to it. You told me Polly Reed's story,
+and the little quail bird had such a charm for Sue that I've repeated it to
+her more than once. In my sleep I seemed to see a mother quail with a little
+one beside her. The two were always together, happily flying or hopping about
+under the trees; but every now and then I heard a sad little note, as of a
+deserted bird somewhere in the wood. I walked a short distance, and parting
+the branches, saw on the open ground another parent bird and a young one by
+its side darting hither and thither, as if lost; they seemed to be restlessly
+searching for something, and always they uttered the soft, sad note, as if the
+nest had disappeared and they had been parted from the little flock. Of course
+my brain had changed the very meaning of the Shaker story and translated it
+into different terms, but when I woke this morning, I could think of nothing
+but my husband and my boy. The two of them seemed to me to be needing me,
+searching for me in the dangerous open country, while I was hidden away in the
+safe shelter of the wood--I and the other little quail bird I had taken out of
+the nest."
+
+"Do you think you could persuade your husband to unite with us?" asked Abby,
+wiping her eyes.
+
+The tension of the situation was too tightly drawn for mirth, or Susanna could
+have smiled, but she answered soberly, "No; if John could develop the best in
+himself, he could be a good husband and father, a good neighbor and citizen,
+and an upright business man, but never a Shaker."
+
+"Did n't he insult your wifely honor and disgrace your home?" "Yes, in the
+last few weeks before I left him. All his earlier offenses were more against
+himself than me, in a sense. I forgave him many a time, but I am not certain
+it was the seventy times seven that the Bible bids us. I am not free from
+blame myself. I was hard the last year, for I had lost hope and my pride was
+trailing in the dust. I left him a bitter letter, one without any love or hope
+or faith in it, just because at the moment I believed I ought, once in my
+life, to let him know how I felt toward him."
+
+"How can you go back and live under his roof with that feeling? It's
+degradation."
+
+"It has changed. I was morbid then, and so wounded and weak that I could not
+fight any longer. I am rested now, and calm. My pluck has come back, and my
+strength. I've learned a good deal here about casting out my own devils; now I
+am going home and help him to cast out his. Perhaps he won't be there; perhaps
+he does n't want me, though when he was his very best self he loved me dearly;
+but that was long, long ago!" sighed Susanna, drearily.
+
+"Oh, this thing the world's people call love!" groaned Abby.
+
+"There is love and love, even in the world outside; for if it is Adam's world
+it is God's, too, Abby! The love I gave my husband was good, I think, but it
+failed somewhere, and I am going back to try again. I am not any too happy in
+leaving you and taking up, perhaps, heavier burdens than those from which I
+escaped."
+
+"Night after night I've prayed to be the means of leading you to the celestial
+life," said the Eldress, "but my plaint was not worthy to be heard. Oh, that
+God would increase our numbers and so revive our drooping faith! We work, we
+struggle, we sacrifice, we pray, we defy the world and deny the flesh, yet we
+fail to gather in Believers."
+
+"Don't say you 've failed, dear, dear Abby!" cried Susanna, pressing the
+Eldress's work-stained hands to her lips. "God speaks to you in one voice, to
+me in another. Does it matter so much as long as we both hear Him? Surely it's
+the hearing and the obeying that counts most! Wish me well, dear friend, and
+help me to say goodbye to the Elder."
+
+The two women found Elder Gray in the office, and Abby, still unresigned, laid
+Susanna's case before him.
+
+"The Great Architect has need of many kinds of workmen in His building," said
+the Elder. "There are those who are willing to put aside the ties of flesh for
+the kingdom of heaven's sake; 'he that is able to receive it, let him receive
+it!'"
+
+"There may also he those who are willing to take up the ties of the flesh for
+the kingdom of heaven's sake," answered Susanna, gently, but with a certain
+courage.
+
+Her face glowed with emotion, her eyes shone, her lips were parted. It was a
+new thought. Abby and Daniel gazed at her for a moment without speaking, then
+Daniel said: "It's a terrible cross to some of the Brethren and Sisters to
+live here outside of the world, but maybe it's more of a cross for such as you
+to live in it, under such conditions as have surrounded you of late years. To
+pursue good and resist evil, to bear your cross cheerfully and to grow in
+grace and knowledge of truth while you're bearing it that's the lesson of
+life, I suppose. If you find you can't learn it outside, come back to us,
+Susanna."
+
+"I will," she promised, "and no words can speak my gratitude for what you have
+all done for me. Many a time it will come back to me and keep me from
+faltering."
+
+She looked back at him from the open doorway, timidly.
+
+"Don't forget us, Sue and me, altogether," she said, her eyes filling with
+tears. "Come to Farnham, if you will, and see if I am a credit to Shaker
+teaching! I shall never be here again, perhaps, and somehow it seems to me as
+if you, Elder Gray, with your education and your gifts, ought to be leading a
+larger life than this."
+
+"I've hunted in the wild Maine forests, in my young days; I've speared salmon
+in her rivers and shot rapids ill a birchbark canoe," said the Elder, looking
+up from the pine table that served as a desk. "I've been before the mast and
+seen strange countries; I've fought Indians; I've faced perils on land and
+sea; but this Shaker life is the greatest adventure of all!"
+
+"Adventure?" echoed Susanna, uncomprehendingly.
+
+"Adventure!" repeated the Elder, smiling at his own thoughts. "Whether I fail,
+or whether I succeed, it's a splendid adventure in ethics."
+
+Abby and Daniel looked at each other when Susanna passed out of the office
+door.
+
+"'They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us,
+they would have continued with us,'" he quoted quietly.
+
+Abby wiped her eyes with her apron. "It's a hard road to travel sometimes,
+Daniel!" she said.
+
+"Yee; but think where it leads, Abby, think where it leads! You're not going
+to complain of dust when you're treading the King's Highway!"
+
+
+Susanna left the office with a drooping head, knowing the sadness that she had
+left behind. Brother Ansel sat under the trees near by, and his shrewd eye
+perceived the drift of coming events.
+
+"Well, Susanna," he drawled, "you're goin' to leave us, like most o' the other
+'jiners.' I can see that with one eye shut." 
+
+"Yes," she replied with a half smile; "but you see, Ansel, I 'jined' John
+Hathaway before I knew anything about Shaker doctrines."
+
+"Yee; but what's to prevent your onjinin' him? They used to tie up married
+folks in the old times so't they could n't move an inch. When they read the
+constitution and bylaws over 'em they used to put in 'till death do us part.'
+That's the way my father was hitched to his three wives, but death _did_ 'em
+part--fortunately for him!"
+
+"'Till death us do part' is still in the marriage service," Susanna said, "and
+I think of it very often."
+
+"I want to know if that's there yit!" exclaimed Ansel, with apparent surprise;
+"I thought they must be leavin' it out, there's so much onjinin' nowadays!
+Well, accordin' to my notions, if there is anything wuss 'n marriage, it's
+hevin' it hold till death, for then menfolks don't git any chance of a
+speritual life till afterwards. They certainly don't when they're being
+dragged down by women-folks an' young ones."
+
+"I think the lasting part of the bargain makes it all the more solemn,"
+Susanna argued.
+
+"Oh, yes, it's solemn enough, but so's a prayer meetin', an' consid'able more
+elevatin' "; and here Ansel regarded the surrounding scenery with frowning
+disapproval, as if it left much to be desired.
+
+"Don't you think that there are any agreeable and pleasant women, Ansel?"
+ventured Susanna.
+
+"Land, yes; heaps of 'em; but they all wear Shaker bunnits!"
+
+"I suppose you know more about the women in the outside world than most of the
+Brothers, on account of traveling so much?"
+
+"I guess anybody 't drives a seed-cart or peddles stuff along the road knows
+enough o' women to keep clear of 'em. They 'll come out the kitchen door,
+choose their papers o' seasonin' an' bottles o' flavorin', worry you 'bout the
+price an' take the aidge off every dime, make up an' then onmake their minds
+'bout what they want, ask if it's pure, an' when by good luck you git your
+cart out o' the yard, they come runnin' along the road after ye to git ye to
+swap a bottle o' vanilla for some spruce gum an' give 'em back the change."
+
+Susanna could not help smiling at Ansel's arraignment of her sex. "Do you
+think they follow you for the pleasure of shopping, or the pleasure of your
+conversation, Ansel?" she asked slyly.
+
+"A little o' both, mebbe; though the pleasure's all on their side," returned
+the unchivalrous Ansel. "But take them same women, cut their hair close to
+their heads (there's a heap o' foolishness in hair, somehow), purge 'em o'
+their vanity, so they won't be lookin' in the glass all the time, make 'em
+depend on one another for sassiety, so they won't crave no conversation with
+menfolks, an' you git an article that's 'bout as good and 'bout as stiddy as a
+man!"
+
+"You never seem to remember that men are just as dangerous to women's
+happiness and goodness as women are to men's," said Susanna, courageously.
+
+"It don't seem so to me! Never see a man, hardly, that could stick to the
+straight an' narrer if a woman wanted him to go the other way. Weak an'
+unstable as water, menfolks are, an' women are pow'ful strong."
+
+"Have your own way, Ansel! I'm going back to the world, but no man shall ever
+say I hindered him from being good. You'll see women clearer in another
+world."
+
+"There'll be precious few of 'em to see!" retorted Ansel. "You're about the
+best o' the lot, but even you have a kind of a managin' way with ye, besides
+fillin' us all full o' false hopes that we'd gathered in a useful Believer,
+one cal'lated to spread the doctrines o' Mother Ann!"
+
+"I know, I know, Ansel, and oh, how sorry I am! You would never believe how I
+long to stay and help you, never believe how much you have helped me! Goodbye,
+Ansel; you've made me smile when my heart was breaking. I shan't forget you!"
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+The Hills of Home
+
+
+Susanna had found Sue in the upper chamber at the Office Building, and began
+to make the simple preparations for her homeward journey. It was the very hour
+when John Hathaway was saying:--
+
+  "Set her place at hearth and board
+   As it used to be."
+
+ Sue interfered with the packing somewhat by darting to and fro, bringing her
+mother sacred souvenirs given her by the Shaker sisters and the children--
+needle-books, pin-balls, thimble-cases, packets of flower-seeds, polished
+pebbles, bottles of flavoring extract.
+
+"This is for Fardie," she would say, "and this for Jack and this for Ellen and
+this for Aunt Louisa--the needle-book, 'cause she's so useful. Oh, I'm glad
+we're going home, Mardie, though I do love it here, and I was most ready to be
+a truly Shaker. It's kind of pityish to have your hair shingled and your
+stocking half-knitted and know how to say 'yee' and then have it all wasted."
+
+Susanna dropped a tear on the dress she was folding. The child was going home,
+as she had come away from it, gay, irresponsible, and merry; it was only the
+mothers who hoped and feared and dreaded. the very universe was working toward
+Susanna's desire at that moment, but she was all unaware of the happiness that
+lay so near. She could not see the freshness of the house in Farnham, the new
+bits of furniture here and there; the autumn leaves in her own bedroom; her
+worktable full of the records of John's sorrowful summer; Jack handsomer and
+taller, and softer, also, in his welcoming mood; Ellen rosy and excited. She
+did not know that Joel Atterbury had said to John that day, "I take it all
+back, old man, and I hope you'll stay on in the firm!" nor that Aunt Louisa,
+who was putting stiff, short-stemmed chrysanthemums in cups and tumblers here
+and there through the house, was much more flexible and human than was natural
+to her; nor that John, alternating between hope and despair, was forever
+humming: 
+
+  "Set her place at hearth and board
+  As it used to be:
+  Higher are the hills of home,
+  Bluer is the sea!"
+
+It is often so. They who go weeping to look for the dead body of a sorrow,
+find a vision of angels where the body has lain.
+
+"I hope Fardie'Il be glad to see us and Ellen will have gingerbread," Sue
+chattered; then, pausing at the window, she added, "I'm sorry to leave the
+hills, 'cause I'specially like them, don't you, Mardie?"
+
+"We are leaving the Shaker hills, but we are going to the hills of home," her
+mother answered cheerily. "Don't you remember the Farnham hills, dear?"
+
+"Yes, I remember," and Sue looked thoughtful; "they were farther off and
+covered with woods; these are smooth and gentle. And we shall miss the lake,
+Mardie."
+
+"Yes; but we can look at the blue sea from your bedroom window, Sue!"
+
+"And we'll tell Fardie about Polly Reed and the little quail bird, won't we?"
+
+"Yes; but he and Jack will have a great deal to say to us, and we must n't
+talk all the time about the dear, kind Shakers, you know!"
+
+"You're all '_buts_,' Mardie!" at which Susanna smiled through her tears.
+
+Twilight deepened into dusk, and dusk into dark, and then the moon rose over
+the poplar trees outside the window where Susanna and Sue were sleeping. The
+Shaker Brethren and Sisters were resting serenely after their day of
+confession. It was the aged Tabitha's last Sabbath on earth, but had she
+known, it would have made no difference; if ever a soul was ready for heaven,
+it was Tabitha's.
+
+There was an Irish family at the foot of the long hill that lay between the
+Settlement and the village of Albion; father, mother, and children had prayed
+to the Virgin before they went to bed; and the gray-haired minister in the
+low-roofed parsonage was writing his communion sermon on a text sacred to the
+orthodox Christian world. The same moon shone over all, and over millions of
+others worshiping strange idols and holding strange beliefs in strange far
+lands, yet none of them owned the whole of heaven; for as Elder Gray said, "It
+is a big place and belongs to God."
+
+Susanna Hathaway went back to John thinking it her plain duty, and to me it
+seems beautiful that she found waiting for her at the journey's end a new love
+that was better than the old; found a husband to whom she could say in that
+first sacred hour when they were alone together, "Never mind, John! Let's
+forget, and begin all over again."
+
+
+When Susanna and Sue alighted at the little railway station at Farnham, and
+started to walk through the narrow streets that led to the suburbs, the
+mother's heart beat more and more tumultuously as she realized that the issues
+of four lives would be settled before nightfall.
+
+Little did Sue reck of life issues, skipping like a young roe from one side of
+the road to the other. "There are the hills, not a bit changed, Mardie!" she
+cried; "and the sea is just where it was!... Here's the house with the parrot,
+do you remember? Now the place where the dog barks and snarls is coming
+next... P'raps he'll be dead.., or p'raps he'll be nicer... Keep close to me
+till we get past the gate... He did n't come out, so p'raps he is dead or gone
+a-visiting.... There's that 'specially lazy cow that's always lying down in
+the Buxtons' field.... I don't b'lieve she's moved since we came away.... Do
+you s'pose she stands up to be milked, Mardie? There's the old bridge over the
+brook, just the same, only the woodbine's red.... There's... There's... Oh,
+Mardie, look, look!... I do b'lieve it's our Jacky!"
+
+Sue flew over the ground like a swallow, calling "Jack-y! Jack-y! It's me and
+Mardie come home!"
+
+Jack extricated himself from his sister's strangling hug and settled his
+collar. "I'm awful glad to see you, Sukey," he said, "but I'm getting too big
+to be kissed. Besides, my pockets are full of angleworms and fishhooks."
+
+"Are you too big to be kissed even by mother?" called Susanna, hurrying to her
+boy, who submitted to her embrace with better grace. "O Jack, Jack! say you're
+glad to see mother! Say it, say it; I can't wait, Jack!"
+
+"'Course I'm glad! Why would n't I be? I tell you I'm tired of Aunt Louisa,
+though she's easier than she was. Time and again I've packed my lunch basket
+and started to run away, but I always made it a picnic and went back again,
+thinking they'd make such a row over me."
+
+"Aunt Louisa is always kind when you're obedient," Susanna urgedú "She ain't
+so stiff as she was. Ellen is real worried about her and thinks she's losing
+her strength, she's so easy to get along with."
+
+"How's... father...?"
+
+"Better'n he was."
+
+"Has n't he been well?"
+
+"Not so very; always quiet and won't eat, nor play, nor anything. I'm home
+with him since Sunday."
+
+"What is the matter with your clothes?" asked Susanna, casting a maternal eye
+over him while she pulled him down here and up there, with anxious
+disapproving glances. "You look so patched, and wrinkled, and grubby."
+
+"Aunt Louisa and father make me keep my best to put on for you, if you should
+come. I clean up and dress every afternoon at train time, only I forgot today
+and came fishing."
+
+"It's too cold to fish, sonny."
+
+"It ain't too cold to fish, but it's too cold for 'em to bite," corrected
+Jack.
+
+"Why were you expecting us just now?" asked Susanna. "I did n't write because
+.... because, I thought.., perhaps.., it would be better to surprise you."
+
+"Father's expecting you every day, not just this one," said Jack.
+
+Susanna sank down on a stone at the end of the bridge, and leaning her head
+against the railing, burst into tears. In that moment the worst of her fears
+rolled away from her heart like the stone from the mouth of a sepulcher. If
+her husband had looked for her return, he must have missed her, regretted her,
+needed her, just a little. His disposition was sweet, even if it were
+thoughtless, and he might not meet her with reproaches after all. There might
+not be the cold greeting she had often feared-- "_Well, you've concluded to
+come back, have you_? _It was about time_!" If only John were a little
+penitent, a little anxious to meet her on some common ground, she felt her
+task would be an easier one.
+
+"Have you got a pain, Mardie?" cried Sue, anxiously bending over her mother.
+
+"No, dear," she answered, smiling through her tears and stretching a hand to
+both children to help her to her feet. "No, dear, I've lost one!"
+
+"I cry when anything aches, not when it stops," remarked Jack, as the three
+started again on their walk. "Say, Sukey, you look bigger and fatter than you
+did when you went away, and you've got short curls 'stead of long ones. Do you
+see how I've grown? Two inches!"
+
+"I'm inches and inches bigger and taller," Sue boasted, standing on tiptoe and
+stretching herself proudly. "And I can knit, and pull maple candy, and say
+Yee, and sing 'O Virgin Church, how great thy light.'"
+
+"Pooh," said Jack, "I can sing 'A sailor's life's the life for me, Yo ho, yo
+ho!' Step along faster, mummy dear; it's 'most supper time. Aunt Louisa won't
+scold if you're with me. There's the house, see? Father'll be working in the
+garden covering up the asters, so they won't freeze before you come."
+
+"There is no garden, Jack. What do you mean?" "Wait till you see if there's no
+garden! Hurrah! there's father at the window, side of Aunt Louisa. Won't he be
+pleased I met you halfway and brought you home!"
+
+
+Oh! it was beautiful, the autumn twilight, the smoke of her own hearth-side
+rising through the brick chimneys! She thought she had left the way of peace
+behind her, but no, the way of peace was here, where her duty was, and her
+husband and children.
+
+The sea was deep blue; the home hills rolled softly along the horizon; the
+little gate that Susanna had closed behind her in anger and misery stood wide
+open; shrubs, borders, young hedgerows, beds of late autumn flowers greeted
+her eyes and touched her heart. A foot sounded on the threshold; the home door
+opened and smiled a greeting; and then a voice choked with feeling, glad with
+welcome, called her name.
+
+Light-footed Sue ran with a cry of joy into her father's outstretched arms,
+and then leaping down darted to Ellen, chattering like a magpie. Husband and
+wife looked at each other for one quivering moment, and then clasped each
+other close.
+
+"Forgive! O Susanna, forgive!"
+
+John's eyes and lips and arms made mute appeals, and it was then Susanna said,
+"Never mind, John! Let's forget, and begin all over again!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Homespun Tales, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
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