"You ain't goin' a step."

"Oh, Charlotte! I'm afraid you hadn't better," wailed Sarah.

Charlotte stood before them both. "Look here, father and mother,"

said she. "I've never gone against your wishes in my life, but now I'm going to. It's my duty to. I was going to marry him once."

"You didn't marry him," said Cephas.

"I was willing to marry him, and that amounts to the same thing for any woman," said Charlotte. "It is just as much my duty to go to him when he's sick; I am going. There's no use talking, I am going."

"You needn't come home again, then," said her father.

"Oh, Cephas!" Sarah cried out. "Charlotte, don't go against your father's wishes! Charlotte!"

But Charlotte shut the door and hurried up-stairs to her room. Her mother followed her, trembling. Cephas sat still, dangling his stocking-feet clear of the floor. He had an ugly look on his face.

Presently he heard the two women coming down-stairs, and his wife's sobbing, pleading voice; then he heard the parlor door shut; Charlotte had gone through the house, and out the front door.

Sarah came in, sniffing piteously. "Oh, Cephas! don't you be hard on the poor child; she felt as if she had got to go," she said, chokingly.

Cephas got up, went padding softly and cautiously in his stocking-feet across the floor to the sink, and took a long drink with loud gulps out of the gourd in the water-pail.

"I don't want to have no more talk about it; I've said my say," said he, with a hard breath, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Charlotte, with a little bundle under her arm, hastened down the hill. When she reached Barney's house she went around and knocked at the side door. As she went into the yard she could see dimly a white-capped woman's head in a south window of the Thayer house farther down the road, and she knew that Rebecca's nurse was watching her. Rebecca's second baby was a week old, so she could do nothing for her brother.

Charlotte knocked softly and waited. She heard a loud clamping step across the floor inside, and a whistle. A boy opened the door and stood staring at her, half abashed, half impudently important, his mouth still puckered with the whistle.

"Is there anybody here but you, Ezra?" asked Charlotte.

The boy shook his head.

"I have come to take care of Mr. Thayer now," said Charlotte.

She entered, and Ezra Ray stood aside, rolling his eyes after her as she went through the kitchen. He whistled again half involuntarily, a sudden jocular pipe on the brink of motion, like a bird. Charlotte turned and shook her head at him, and he stopped short. He sat down on a chair near the door, and dangled his feet irresolutely.

Charlotte went into the bedroom where Barney lay, a rigidly twisted, groaning heap under a mass of bed-clothing, which Ezra Ray had kept over him with energy. She bent over him. "I've come to take care of you, Barney," said she. His eyes, half dazed in his burning face, looked up at her with scarcely any surprise.

[Illustration: "'I've come to take care of you'"]

Charlotte laid back some of the bedclothes whose weight was a torture, and straightened the others. She worked about the house noiselessly and swiftly. She was skilful in the care of the sick; she had had considerable experience. Soon everything was clean and in order; there was a pleasant smell of steeping herbs through the house. Charlotte had set an old remedy of her mother's steeping over the fire--a harmless old-wives' decoction, with which to supplement the doctor's remedies, and give new courage to the patient's mind.

Barney came to think that this remedy which Charlotte prepared was of more efficacy than any which the doctor mixed in his gallipots. That is, when he could think at all, and his mind and soul was able to reassert itself over his body. He had a hard illness, and after he was out of bed he could only sit bent miserably over in a quilt-covered rocking-chair beside the fire. He could not straighten himself up without agonizing pain. People thought that he never would, and he thought so himself. His grandfather, his mother's father, had been in a similar condition for years before his death.

People called that to mind, and so did Barney. "He's goin' to be the way his grandfather Emmons was," the men said in the store. Barney could dimly remember that old figure bent over almost on all-fours like a dog; its wretched, grizzled face turned towards the earth with a brooding sternness of contemplation. He wondered miserably where his grandfather's old cane was, when he should be strong enough in his pain-locked muscles to leave his rocking-chair and crawl about in the spring sunshine. It used to be in the garret of the old house. He thought that he would ask Rebecca or William to look for it some day.

He hesitated to speak about it. He half dreaded to think that the time was coming when he would be strong enough to move about, for then he was afraid Charlotte would leave him and go home. He had been afraid that she would when he left his bed. He had a childishly guilty feeling that he had perhaps stayed there a little longer than was necessary on that account. One Sunday the doctor had said quite decisively to Charlotte, "It won't hurt him any to be got up a little while to-morrow. It will be better for him. You can get William to come in and help." Charlotte had come back from the door and reported to Barney, and he had turned his face away with a quivering sigh.

"Why, what is the matter? Don't you want to be got up?" asked Charlotte.

"Yes," said Barney, miserably.

"What is the matter?" Charlotte said, bending over him. "Don't you feel well enough?"

Barney gave her a pitiful, shamed look like a child. "You'll go, then," he half sobbed.

Charlotte turned away quickly. "I shall not go as long as you need me, Barney," she said, with a patient dignity.

Barney did not dream against what odds Charlotte had stayed with him.

Her mother had come repeatedly, and expostulated with her out in the entry when she went away.

"It ain't fit for you to stay here, as if you was married to him, when you ain't, and ain't ever goin' to be, as near as I can make out," she said. "William can get that woman over to the North Village now, or I can come, or your aunt Hannah would come for a while, till Rebecca gets well enough to see to him a little. She was sayin'

yesterday that it wa'n't fit for you to stay here."

"I'm here, and I'm going to stay here till he's better than he is now," said Charlotte.

"Folks will talk."

"I can't help it if they do. I'm doing what I think is right."

"It ain't fit for an unmarried woman like you to be takin' care of him," said her mother, and a sudden blush flamed over her old face.

Charlotte did not blush at all. "William comes in every day," she said, simply.

"I think he could get along a while now with what William does an'

what we could cook an' bring in," pleaded her mother. "I'd come over every day an' set a while; I'd jest as lieves as not. If you'd only come home, Charlotte. Your father didn't mean anythin' when he said you shouldn't. He asked me jest this mornin' when you was comin'."

"I ain't coming till he's well enough so he don't need me," said Charlotte. "There's no use talking, mother. I must go back now; he'll wonder what we're talking about;" and she shut the door gently upon her mother, still talking.

Her aunt Hannah came, and her aunt Sylvia, quaking with gentle fears.

She even had to listen to remonstrances from William Berry, honestly grateful as he was for her care of his brother-in-law.

"I ain't quite sure that it's right for you to stay here, Charlotte,"

he said, looking away from her uncomfortably. "Rebecca says--'Hadn't you better let me go for that woman again?'"

"I think I had better stay for the present," Charlotte replied.

"Of course--I know you do better for him--than anybody else could, but--"

"How is Rebecca?" asked Charlotte.

"She is getting along pretty well, but it's slow. She's kind of worried about you, you know. She's had considerable herself to bear.

It's hard to have folks--" William stopped short, his face burning.

"I am not afraid, if I know I am doing what is right," said Charlotte. "You tell Rebecca I am coming in to see her as soon as I can get a chance."

One contingency had never occurred to Barney in his helpless clinging to Charlotte. He had never once dreamed that people might talk disparagingly about her in consequence. He had, partly from his isolated life, partly from natural bent, a curious innocence and ignorance in his conception of human estimates of conduct. He had not the same vantage-points with many other people, and indeed in many cases seemed to hold the identical ones which he had chosen when a child and first observed anything.

If now and then he overheard a word of expostulation, he never interpreted it rightly. He thought that people considered it wrong for Charlotte to do so much for him, and weary herself, when he had treated her so badly. And he agreed with them.

He thought that he should never stand upright again. He went always before his own mental vision bent over like his grandfather, his face inclined ever downward towards his miserable future.