"Why don't you come, too, Henry?" she said, timidly.

"No, I've quit," replied Henry. "I've quit begging where I don't get any alms; but as for you, if you get anything that satisfies your soul, for G.o.d's sake hold on to it, Eunice, and don't let it go."

Then he pulled her bonneted head down and kissed her thin lips, with a kind of tenderness which was surprising. "You've been a good wife, Eunice," he said.

Eunice laid her hand on his shoulder and looked at him a second. She was almost frightened. Outward evidences of affection had not been frequent between them of late years, or indeed ever. They were New-Englanders to the marrow of their bones. Anything like an outburst of feeling or sentiment, unless in case of death or disaster, seemed abnormal. Henry realized his wife's feeling, and he smiled up at her.

"We are getting to be old folks," he said, "and we've had more bitter than sweet in life, and we have neither of us ever said much as to how we felt to each other, but--I never loved you as much as I love you now, Eunice, and I've taken it into my head to say it."

Eunice's lips quivered a little and her eyes reddened. "There ain't a woman in Amity who has had so good a husband as I have all these years, if you don't go to meeting," she replied. Then she added, after a second's pause: "I didn't know as you did feel just as you used to, Henry. I didn't know as any man did. I know I've lost my looks, and--"

"I can seem to see your looks, brighter than ever they were, in your heart," said Henry. He colored himself a little at his own sentiment.

Then he pulled her face down to his again and gave her a second kiss.

"Now run along to your meeting," he said. "Have you got enough on?

The wind sounds cold."

"Yes," replied Eunice. "This cape's real thick. I put a new lining in it this winter, you know, and, besides, I've got my crocheted jacket under it. I'm as warm as toast."

Eunice, after she had gone out in the keen night air with her sister-in-law and her niece, reflected with more uneasiness than pleasure upon her husband's unwonted behavior.

"Does it seem to you that Henry looks well lately?" she asked the elder Maria, as they hurried along.

"Yes; why not?" returned Maria.

"I don't know. It seems to me he's been losing flesh."

"Nonsense!" said Maria. "I never saw him looking better than he does now. I was thinking only this morning that he was making a better, healthier old man than he was as a young man. But I do wish he would go to meeting. I don't think his mind is right about some things.

Suppose folks do have troubles. They ought to be led to the Lord by them, instead of pulling back. Henry hasn't had anything more to worry him, nor half as much, as most men. He don't take things right.

He ought to go to meeting."

"I guess he's just as good as a good many who do go to meeting,"

returned Eunice, with unwonted spirit.

"I don't feel competent to judge as to that," replied Maria, with a tone of aggravating superiority. Then she added, "'By their works ye shall know them.'"

"I would give full as much for Henry's chances as for some who go to meeting every Sunday of their lives," said Eunice, with still more spirit. "And as for trials, they weigh heavier on some than on others."

Then young Maria, who had been listening uneasily, broke in. She felt herself a strong partisan of her Aunt Eunice, for she adored her uncle, but she merely said that she thought Uncle Henry did look a little thin, and she supposed he was tired Sunday, and it was the only day he had to rest; then she abruptly changed the whole subject by wondering if the Ramseys across the river would let Jessy go to church if she trimmed a hat for her with some red velvet and a feather which she had in her possession.

"No, they wouldn't!" replied her aunt Maria, sharply, at once diverted. "I can tell you just exactly what they would do, if you were to trim up a hat with that red velvet and that feather and give it to that young one. Her good-for-nothing mother would have it on her own head in no time, and go flaunting out in it with that man that boards there."

Nothing could excel the acrimonious accent with which Aunt Maria weighed down the "man who boards there," and the acrimony was heightened by the hoa.r.s.eness of her voice. Her cold was still far from well, but Aunt Maria stayed at home from church for nothing short of pneumonia.

The church was about half a mile distant. The meeting was held in a little chapel built out like an architectural excrescence at the side of the great, oblong, wooden structure, with its piercing steeple.

The chapel windows blazed with light. People were flocking in. As they entered, a young lady began to play on an out-of-tune piano, which Judge Josiah Saunders had presented to the church. She played a Moody-and-Sankey hymn as a sort of prologue, although n.o.body sang it.

It was a curious custom which prevailed in the Amity church. A Moody-and-Sankey hymn was always played in evening meetings instead of the morning voluntary on the great organ.

Maria and her two aunts moved forward and seated themselves. Maria looked absently at the smooth expanse of hair which showed below the hat of the girl who was playing. The air was played very slowly, otherwise the little audience might have danced a jig to it. Maria thought of the meetings which she used to attend in Edgham, and how she used to listen to the plaint of the whippoorwill on the river-bank while the little organ gave out its rich, husky drone.

This, somehow, did not seem so religious to her. She remembered how she had used to be conscious of Wollaston Lee's presence, and how she had hoped he would walk home with her, and she reflected with what shame and vague terror she now held him constantly in mind. Then she thought of George Ramsey, and directly, without seeing him, she became aware that he was seated on her right and was furtively glancing at her. A wild despair seized her at the thought that he might offer to accompany her home, and how she must not allow it, and how she wanted him to do so. She kept her head steadfastly averted.

The meeting dragged on. Men rose and spoke and prayed, at intervals the out-of-tune piano was invoked. A woman behind Maria sang contralto with a curious effect, as if her head were in a tin-pail.

There were odd, dull, metallic echoes about it which filled the whole chapel. The woman's daughter had some cheap perfume on her handkerchief, and she was incessantly removing it from her m.u.f.f. A man at the left coughed a good deal. Maria saw in front of her Lily Merrill's graceful brown head, in a charming hat with red roses under the brim, and a long, soft, brown feather. Lily's mother was not with her. Dr. Ellridge did not attend evening meetings, and Mrs. Merrill always remained at home in the hope that he might call.

After church was over, Maria stuck closely to her aunts. She even pushed herself between them, but they did not abet her. Both Eunice and Aunt Maria had seen George Ramsey, and they had their own views.

Maria could not tell how it happened, but at the door of the chapel she found herself separated from both her aunts, and George Ramsey was asking if he might accompany her home. Maria obeyed her instincts, although the next moment she could have killed herself for it. She smiled, and bowed, and tucked her little hand into the crook of the young man's offered arm. She did not see her aunts exchanging glances of satisfaction.

"It will be a real good chance for her," said Eunice.

"Hush, or somebody will hear you," said Maria, in a sharp, pleased tone, as she and her sister-in-law walked together down the moonlit street.

Maria did not see Lily Merrill's start and look of piteous despair as she took George's arm. Lily was just behind her. Maria, in fact, saw nothing. She might have been walking in a vacuum of emotion.

"It is a beautiful evening," said George Ramsey, and his voice trembled a little.

"Yes, beautiful," replied Maria.

Afterwards, thinking over their conversation, she could not remember that they had talked about anything else except the beauty of the evening, but had dwelt incessantly upon it, like the theme of a song.

The aunts lagged behind purposely, and Maria went in Eunice's door.

She thought that her niece would ask George to come in and she would not be in the way. Henry looked inquiringly at the two women, who had an air of mystery, and Maria responded at once to his unspoken question.

"George Ramsey is seeing her home," she said, "and the front-door key is under the mat, and I thought Maria could ask him in, and I would go home through the cellar, and not be in the way. Three is a company." Maria said the last plat.i.tude with a silly simper.

"I never saw anything like you women," said Henry, with a look of incredulous amus.e.m.e.nt. "I suppose you both of you have been making her wedding-dress, and setting her up house-keeping, instead of listening to the meeting."

"I heard every word," returned Maria, with dignity, "and it was a very edifying meeting. It would have done some other folks good if they had gone, and as for Maria, she can't teach school all her days, and here is her father with a second wife."

"Well, you women do beat the Dutch," said her brother, with a tenderly indulgent air, as if he were addressing children.

Aunt Maria lingered in her brother's side of the house, talking about various topics. She hesitated even about her stealthy going through the cellar, lest she should disturb Maria and her possible lover. Now and then she listened. She stood close to the wall. Finally she said, with a puzzled look to Eunice, who was smoothing out her bonnet-strings, "It's queer, but I can't hear them talking."

"Maybe he didn't come in," said Eunice.

"If they are in the parlor, you couldn't hear them," said Henry, still with his half-quizzical, half-pitying air.

"She would have taken him in the parlor--I should think she would have known enough to," said Eunice; "and you can't always hear talking in the parlor in this room."

Maria made a move towards her brother's parlor, on the other side of the tiny hall.

"I guess you are right," said she, "and I know she would have taken him in there. I started a fire in there on purpose before I went to meeting. It was borne in upon me that somebody might come home with her."

Maria tiptoed into the parlor, with Eunice, still smoothing her bonnet-strings, at her heels. Both women stood close to the wall, papered with white-and-gold paper, and listened.

"I can't hear a single thing," said Maria.

"I can't either," said Eunice. "I don't believe he did come in."

"It's dreadful queer, if he didn't," said Maria, "after the way he eyed her in meeting."

"Suppose you go home through the cellar, and see," said Eunice.