The speaker was a girl of sixteen—a fair, bright creature, with dancing eyes, and that alert expression which we find on the faces of those to whom the future is an interesting and exciting puzzle which they long to solve.

She was watching with curious interest the absorption of her sister, who knelt before a half-packed trunk, studying the disposal of packages so as to solve that old problem, "How to get twice as much into a trunk as it will reasonably hold."

She made no answer to the young questioner, having just taken up a closely written sheet of paper, the contents of which absorbed her attention. The question was repeated.

"Louise, what do you expect to do with all those tidies?"

"Put them on chairs and sofas—" with a far-away expression and dreamy tone, and eyes only for the paper before her.

The young girl laughed slightly, then her face grew sober.

"Louise," she said, hesitating as one who might be on doubtful ground, "has Lewis told you anything about his home and its surroundings?"

"Somewhat, dear—" still only half attending to the speaker.

"Well, Addie Dunlop says they live very plainly indeed. She visits the Wheelers, you know, in that vicinity, and she was at their house on two different occasions. She says it is quite isolated from neighbours, and is a regular country farmhouse."

This brought a laugh.

"What would you have a country farmhouse but a country farmhouse?"

"Oh well, Louise, you know what I mean."

If she did she kept the knowledge in silence; and her young sister, after regarding her with a curious look for a moment, drew a heavy sigh.

"It doesn't seem to me that you belong to country farmhouses," she said boldly, "with your education and talents. What will you do with them buried among commonplace—hills?" She had nearly said people, but checked herself. "Why should Lewis hide himself in that out-of-the-way place?"

"Well, dear, you know it is a question of health with him. Nearly all his plans in life had to be changed to meet the demands of a failing body. Farm life agrees with him."

"I don't believe it will with you. I don't like to think of you away off there, miles away from anything to which you are accustomed. Louise, honestly, aren't you afraid you will be homesick?"

Thus solemnly questioned, Louise dropped her engrossing paper, and turning from the trunk, gave the questioner the full benefit of her laughing eyes.

"My dear little grandmother, have you gone and gotten your yourself into a fever of anxiety over your young and giddy sister? I'm not a bit afraid of a farmhouse. As for homesickness, of course I shall have that disease. What sort of a heart would it be that could leave such a home as mine without longing for it, and the dear faces that belong to it, sometimes many times a day? But having looked at the matter fairly, it seems to be the right thing to do. And, my troubled little sister, you want to fully realize this. I am not going 'away off there' alone, but with Lewis Morgan; and if I did not love him enough to be absolutely certain that I could go to the ends of the earth with him as well as not, if it should seem best to do so, I assuredly ought not to marry him."

"And leave papa and mamma!"

It was impossible not to laugh at the startled, tragic tone in which these words were spoken, as the elder sister repeated them—

"And leave papa and mamma! And also, which is a very important matter, leave my dear little troubled sister Estelle. Positively, dear, though it has its sad side, of course, it does not seem too much of a sacrifice for me to make in order to be with Lewis. If it did, I should think myself unworthy of him."

"How strange!" said the younger sister, though she was wise enough this time to say it to herself. "I'm sure I don't see how she can do it. Besides papa and mamma, there is our beautiful home, and all the girls, and the lectures, and the circles, and—oh, well, everything. According to Addie Dunlop she will just be buried alive, surrounded by snow in winter and haying and harvesting in summer. What is there in Lewis Morgan that should make her want to go? I wouldn't like to go anywhere with him. He is nice enough; he is very nice indeed, for that matter. I like him as well, if not better, than any of the young men who call on us. But liking a man and enjoying a half-hour's talk with him, and going to a lecture or concert with him, is one thing, and going away from one's father and mother to spend a lifetime with him is another."

The conclusion of her soliloquy was that she said aloud, in tones more dismayed than before—

"I don't understand it at all! I never could go away with Lewis Morgan, and leave papa and mamma and everybody."

Whereupon the bride-elect leaned over her open trunk and laughed immoderately. Her young sister's perplexity seemed so funny to her.

"Of course you couldn't, you dear child," she said, when she could speak. "You are not expected to want to go away from papa and mamma and live with Lewis Morgan, though I am sure I hope you will come and live with us half the time. Farmhouses are very nice places in which to spend summer, Estelle. But you mustn't wear a woe-begone face over me, and think of me as making a sacrifice. If you ever give your heart to a good, true man, you will be entirely willing to go away with him, and until you are you must never think of taking marriage vows. Meantime, dear, of course you don't understand it; you are much too young. I hope it will be many a year before the thing will seem possible to you."

"It will never seem possible," Estelle said stoutly. "If I have got to love any man enough to be willing to go away from papa and mamma before I can be married, I shall have to be an old maid; for that is all nonsense. I know no man on earth could tempt me to do it."

"Very well," said the bride in much composure, "I am glad you think so; it is the best way to feel. To be sure, people change their minds sometimes; but at your age it is much the nicest thing to think. Meantime, dear, don't you worry about those tidies. I shall find places for them, where they will set the nice old-fashioned rooms aglow with their beauty. I am glad I have so many. Now, do you suppose that ebony box would fit in this niche? I would like to have it here, because we shall keep this trunk with us all the time."

"She hasn't the least idea how farmhouses look, especially that one. I wonder if she has the slightest notion how her future brother-in-law looks? Lewis Morgan indeed! I wish he had stayed in Australia!" And with another long-drawn sigh the troubled young sister went in search of the ebony box.

This was not the first time that Louise Barrows, the bride-elect, had been called upon to vindicate the comforts of her future home. Her father had demurred and hesitated, and argued the question with his prospective son-in-law, and the mother had shed some tears in secret over the thought that the daughter of whom she was so proud had chosen so obscure and prosaic a future.

"Think of her getting-up at four o'clock in the morning to look after the butter and milk, and get breakfast for the workmen!" she had said to her husband in their confidential talks; and he had answered—

"There are worse lots in life than that, I suppose."

But he had sighed as heavily as the young daughter always did when she thought about it, and he had wished from his inmost heart that things had shaped differently. Still he essayed to comfort his wife.

"He is Louise's own choice, and he is a good Christian man, with strong, solid principles. It might have been much worse."

"Oh yes," the mother assented, "he is a Christian man;" and the tone in which she said it might almost have justified you in expecting her to add: "But that doesn't amount to much." What she did say was: "But what can Louise do for herself or others, buried alive out there? She is eminently fitted for usefulness. You know as well as I that she would grace any circle, and that she is a leader among her set; she leads in the right direction, too, which is more than can be said of most girls: but what chance will she have to develop her talents?"

"That is true," the father said, and then he sighed again. Yet these Christian parents had prayed for their daughter every day since she was born, and professed assured confidence in the belief that God guides his children and answers prayer. Still their faith did not reach high enough to get away from a lurking belief that the Guide of their daughter's life had made a mistake in setting her future among such surroundings. Not that they put the thought into such words—that would have been irreverent; but what did their sighings and regrettings mean?

It was rather hard on the prospective bride, even though her parents were wise enough to say almost nothing about their regrets, now that the question was settled. But she felt it in the atmosphere. Besides, she had to encounter a like anxiety from another source. It was only the evening before Estelle's cross-questioning occurred that Lewis Morgan himself, getting-up from one of the luxurious easy-chairs which, repeated in varying patterns, abounded in Mr. Barrows' parlours, crossed over to the mantel, and, resting his elbow on its edge and his forehead on his hand, looked down from his fine height on Louise as she nestled in a brown-tinted plush chair that harmonized perfectly with her soft, rich dress, and contrasted perfectly with her delicate skin, and made to the gazer a lovely picture, which seemed but to heighten his perplexity.

"After all, Louise," he said, "I don't know but we made a mistake in planning as we did. Someway, out in Australia, where my planning was done, the contrast between your present home and our future one was not so sharply defined before me as it is here."

"Shut your eyes, then," said Louise, "and imagine yourself back in Australia, when you have any planning to do. That is quite as near as I want you to get to that barbarous country again."

Lewis Morgan laughed, and then immediately his brow clouded.

"But, Louise, there is a fitness in things, and you fit right in here. Everything matches with you." And his eyes gave a swift journey up and down the room, taking in its soft and harmonizing furnishings—the richness and glow of the carpet, the delicacy and grace of the lace curtains, the air of ease and elegance in the disposal of the elegant furniture, the rare paintings looking down on him from the walls, glowing in the gas-light, then back to the small, graceful figure in the brown chair.

"Louise, you are entirely unfamiliar, you know, with country life, and I don't believe I can give you the least idea of the sharp and trying contrasts."

"Then don't try. Wait, and let me see them for myself."

"Yes, but—what if we wait until it is too late to rectify mistakes? Though, for that matter, we can change, of course, should the thing prove unbearable. But I am really afraid it is a mistake. I seem to feel it more to-night than ever before."

"Lewis," said the little brown figure, "do you really think I am a bird of bright plumage, that must have a gilded cage and downy nest, and nothing else?"

He looked down on her with unutterable admiration in his eyes.

"Oh, you know very well," he said, half smiling, "that I think you are everything that any mortal woman can be—possibly a little more. But—well, it is not only the house and surroundings, though they are rude and plain enough. I am afraid that you and my mother will not understand each other. She is old-fashioned and peculiar—she is a good mother, and I love and respect her; but, Louise, she is not in the least like yours, and I am not sure that she will have an idea in common with you."

"Yes she will. We shall both bestow an undue amount of admiration on, and take an absurd degree of comfort in, your tall self."

He laughed again, and then shook his head.

"I doubt whether even there you will not be disappointed. My mother has a strong, warm love for her family; but she does not show it in the way to which you have been accustomed. She is reserved, pent-up. She will sit up with my little sister Nellie six nights in succession; but she never caresses and kisses her as your mother does Lora."

"Never mind," said Louise; "it is not natural for some people to kiss and caress. The sitting up is the most important matter after all, especially when one is sick; though I will own that I am sorry for poor Nellie, without the kisses. Perhaps we can work together: your mother will do the patient caring for, and I will do the kissing. How will that work?"

"I see you are bent on making everything shine with the brightness of your own spirit. But, really and truly, I am afraid I have been dreaming a wild dream in supposing that I could transplant you to such a rough atmosphere. It was ridiculous in my father to put in the proviso that we must live at home. I ought to have resisted it. Because I must spend my days out of doors, travelling over a farm, is no reason why we shouldn't have a home of our own. I think my father is abundantly able to give me a separate start, if he only saw the matter in that light."

"But since he doesn't, we must, like dutiful children, try to see it in his light, until such time as we can win him over to our notions or become full converts to his. I know all about it, Lewis. I don't expect to walk in a garden of roses all the time. I know, too, that to go into farm life is a trial to you. All your plans were in another channel. Yet I am more than glad to give up all those rose-coloured plans for the sake of seeing you look at this moment as strong and well es your summer on a farm has made you. I fully intend to be happy on that farm. I shall have to make a confession to you. Papa talked seriously to me about trying to rent a farm and stock it for us, and do you know I controverted it?"

"I should think so," said Lewis Morgan hastily. "He ought not to spare the money from his business. And, besides, it would be unjust as he is situated."

"Well, I didn't enter into that part of it. I simply said that I thought duty to your father obliged you to yield to his very decided wishes in this matter, and that you and I were both resolved on a thorough trial of it. And, really, I don't apprehend any dreadful consequences. I want to try the experiment of living with my mother-in-law and having a thoroughly good time in doing it. And, Lewis, there is one subject on which we surely can agree. You forget the most important one of all."

He shook his head, and his voice was low and sad.

"No, I don't, Louise. You are mistaken: not one of the family, save myself, is a Christian."

The first shadow that he had seen on his bride's face, when this subject was being discussed, flitted across it now. At last he had startled her.

[CHAPTER II.]

THE TREE.

"APPEALING to your Father in heaven to witness your sincerity, you, Lewis, do now take this woman whose hand you hold, choosing her alone from all the world, to be your lawfully wedded wife? You trust her as your best earthly friend; you promise to love, cherish, and protect her; to be considerate of her happiness in your plans of life; to cultivate for her sake all manly virtues, and in all things to seek her welfare as you seek your own? You pledge yourself thus honourably to be her husband in good faith, so long as God in his providence shall spare you to each other?"

"In like manner, looking to your heavenly Father for his blessing, you, Louise, do now receive this man, whose hand you hold, to be your lawfully wedded husband? You choose him from all the world, as he has chosen you; you pledge your trust to him as your best earthly friend; you promise to love, to comfort, and to honour him; to cultivate for his sake all womanly graces; to guard his reputation and to assist him in his life-work, and in all things to esteem his happiness as your own? You give yourself thus trustfully to him to be his wife in good faith so long as the providence of God shall spare you to each other?"

The old story, repeated so many hundred times since the world was new, and yet so new a story to each one who becomes an actor in it that it quickens the pulses and pales the cheek.

Estelle Barrows, alert, eager, keen-eared, listened with flushing cheeks and quickened breathing to the interchange of solemn vows, and shivered over the closeness of the promises, and marvelled at the clear steadiness of her sister's voice as she answered, "I do." The same sceptical spirit was in Estelle that had governed her during her talk with her sister. She could not yet see how such things were possible. It was all very well for Lewis to promise to trust Louise as his "best earthly friend,"—of course she was; to promise to love, cherish, and protect her—it was the least he could do after she had given up so much for him. "To be considerate for her in his plans for life." Estelle almost thought that he ought to have hesitated over that promise. Had he been considerate? Did he think that home in the far-away farmhouse would be conducive to her happiness? Still he doubtless meant his best, and it was right enough for him to ring out his "I do" in a strong manly voice. But for Louise, how could she say he was her best earthly friend, with papa looking down on her from his manly height and mamma struggling to hold back the tears? How could she promise to assist him in his life-work? Suppose his entire life had to be spent on that hateful farm, must Louise bury herself there and assist him? How would she do it? Would he expect her, sometimes, to even milk the cows! She had heard that farmers' wives did these things. Or could she be expected to churn the butter, or work it, or mould it ready for market, and then to drive into town on a market-waggon and barter her rolls of butter for woollen yarn to knit him some socks? She had stood with a sort of terrified fascination at one of the busy corners of the city only the day before, and watched a market-woman clamber down from her height and take a pail of butter on one arm and a basket of eggs on the other, and tramp into the store. She had told it to Louise afterward, and she had laughed merrily over the discomforted face, and had asked if the woman did not look rosy-cheeked and happy.

All these and a hundred other commingling and disturbing thoughts floated through Estelle's brain as she watched the quiet face of her sister during the ordeal of marriage. Even after the hopelessly binding words, "I pronounce you husband and wife," had been spoken, she still stood, gazing and wondering. She could never, never do it. Marriage was nice enough in the abstract, and she liked to go to weddings, at least she had always liked to before this one. But to single out one man and make him the centre of all these solemn and unalterable vows! And that man to be Lewis Morgan!

Louise seemed entirely unconscious of the necessity for any such turmoil of brain on her account. She looked as serenely sweet and satisfied in her white silk robes as she had in the simple gold-brown that had been one of her favourite home dresses. Oh yes; she was in white silk and bridal veil and orange blossoms, and the blinds were closed, and the heavy curtains dropped (although it was mid-day), and the blaze of the gas lighted up the scene; and there was a retinue of bridesmaids, in their white robes and their ten-buttoned kids, and there were all the et ceteras of the modern fashionable wedding!

All these things fitted as naturally into the everyday life of the Barrows family as hard work and scanty fare fit into the lives of so many. They had not discussed the question at all, but had merely accepted all these minor details as among the inevitables, and made them ready. Mrs. Barrows came from an aristocratic and wealthy family; so also did the father; and all the surroundings and associations of the family had been connected with wealth and worldliness to such a degree that, although they were reckoned among their set as remarkably plain and conscientiously economical people, viewed from Lewis Morgan's standpoint they were lavish of their expenditures to a degree that he knew his father would have denounced as unpardonable.

Is not it a pity that in this carping world we cannot oftener put ourselves in other people's places, mentally at least, and try to discover how we should probably feel and talk and act were we surrounded by their circumstances and biased by their educations? Something of this Lewis Morgan had done. He might almost be said to occupy half-way ground between the rigid plainness of his country home life and the luxurious ease of his wife's city home life. He had been out into the world, and had seen both sides, and his nature was broad enough and deep enough to distinguish between people and their surroundings. Therefore, while he admired and respected Mr. Barrows, he respected and loved his father, who was the very antipodes of his city brother.

Hundreds of miles away from the gas-lights and glamour of orange blossoms, and bridal veils, and wedding favours, on a bleak hillside, was a plain two-story frame house, surrounded by ample barns, which showed in their architecture and design a more comfortable finish for the purposes for which they were intended than the plain unpainted house had ever shown. There was even a sense of beauty, or at least of careful neatness, in the choosing of the paints and the general air of the buildings, that the house lacked. Whatever Jacob Morgan thought of his family, it was quite apparent that he had a high opinion of his stock.

Within this square, plain, solemn-looking house, on a certain dull and solemn autumn evening, sat the Morgan family, gathered apparently for a special occasion; for though every one of them, down to the gray old cat purring behind the great wood stove, tried to act as usual, a general air of expectancy, indescribable and yet distinctly felt, pervaded the room.

The room, by the way, deserves a passing description. It was at once the sitting-room, dining-room, and kitchen of the Morgans. It was large and square, and scrupulously clean. There was a large old-fashioned table, with its great leaves turned down, and itself pushed up against the north side of the house; and it had a dark, flowered, shiny oil-cloth spread all over its surface, reaching down nearly to the floor. On the oiled surface a large-sized, old-fashioned candlestick held a substantial tallow candle, which served to show Mother Morgan where to put the point of the great darning-needle as she solemnly wove it in and out of the gray sock drawn on her large, labour-roughened hand. The old-fashioned tray and snuffers stood beside the candlestick, and a dreary-faced girl, in a dark calico dress, closely buttoned at the throat and guiltless of a collar, occupied herself in applying the snuffers at regular intervals to the black wick that rapidly formed.

Occasionally the mother hinted that it was a very shiftless way to spend her time, and that she would do better to get out her mending or her knitting. But the girl, with a restless sort of half-sigh, replied that she "couldn't mend or knit to-night."

"And why not to-night as well as any time?" questioned Mrs. Morgan in a half-vexed tone, as one who was fully prepared to combat sentiment or folly of any sort that might have arisen in her daughter's mind. But the daughter only answered, "Oh, I don't know!" and snuffed the candle again; and the darning-needle gleamed back and forth in the candle-glow, and no sound broke the stillness for the next ten minutes.

The other furnishings of the room can be briefly given. A square stand in the corner held the "Farmer's Companion," a weekly paper highly prized; a small copy of "Webster," very much abridged, and with one cover gone. A tack in the wall, over the stand, held the "Farmer's Almanac;" and near it a pasteboard case, somewhat gaily decorated with fancy pictures, held the family hairbrush and comb. The great stove, capable of taking in large pieces of wood at a time, was aglow, both with fire-light and with polish, and was really the only bright and pleasant thing in the room. The floor was painted a good, clear yellow, and was guiltless of even a rug to relieve its bareness.

Behind the stove, with his feet on the hearth, and his slouched hat pushed on the back of his head, and his pants tucked carefully into his barn-yard boots, sat the younger son of the family, John Morgan, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes fixed somewhat gloomily on the fire. Just across from him, occupying the other corner of the fireplace, was the father of the family, a prematurely old, bent man. His gray hair stood in disorder on his head—"stood" being the exact word to apply to it, as even vigorous brushing never coaxed it into quietness for any length of time. He was tilted slightly back in his straight-backed wooden arm-chair, which boasted of a patchwork cushion, and was the only bit of luxury that the room contained. A few chairs, yellow painted like the floor, wooden-bottomed, keeping themselves in orderly condition in the three unoccupied corners of the room, completed its furnishings—unless a shelf at the back of the stove, and in somewhat alarming proximity to the aforesaid barn-yard boots, where a row of milk-pans were stationed waiting for the cream to "set," and a line on which hung certain towels used in cleansing and drying the pans, and a hook at a little distance holding the family hand-towel, can be called furnishings.

Sundry other hooks were empty—the sixteen-year-old daughter having taken counsel with herself for a little, and then quietly removed two coats and a pair of overalls to the back kitchen closet.

A door leading into the small, square, bare-floored bedroom of Jacob Morgan and his wife stood open, and revealed the six-year-old baby of the family, fair-haired, soft-eyed Nellie Morgan, her eyes at this time being wide-open and aglow with an excitement which she could not control. But for the solemn rule that seven o'clock must find her in bed, whether the town three miles away was on fire, or whatever was happening, she would have begged to stay out of that trundle-bed, on this particular evening, just one hour more.

John Morgan winked and blinked, and nodded assent to his dream-thoughts with his mouth wide-open, then came down on the four legs of his chair with a sudden thud that made him wide-awake and rather cross. He looked at the tall, loud-voiced old clock in the corner, which was certainly part of the furniture, and the most important part; it is strange I should have forgotten it. At this moment it was making up its mind to announce the advent of the next hour.

"It seems a pity that Lewis couldn't have got around at a little more seasonable hour," Farmer Morgan said at last, rubbing his eyes and yawning heavily, and gazing at the solemn-faced clock. "I can't see why he couldn't just as well have taken an earlier train and got here this afternoon. It will be getting-up time before we fairly go to bed."

"I don't see any occasion for being very late to bed," Mrs. Morgan said; and she drove the gleaming needle through the sock as though she were vexed at the yawning hole. "We needn't sit up till morning to talk, there will be time enough for that; and so long as Lewis went to the expense of getting supper at the village, we won't have to be hindered on that account."

"I'm most awful glad he did," interposed the candle-snuffer. "I couldn't bear to think of getting supper and washing dishes right before her."

"I wonder why not? She most likely has been used to dishes, and she knows they have to be washed. It isn't worth while to go to putting on airs before her so long as you can't keep them on. The dishes will probably have to be washed three times a day, just as they always have been. Because Lewis has got married the world isn't going to stop turning around."

How fast the darning-needle slipped through the hole, shrinking it at every turn and stabbing its sides with great gray threads!

"I most wonder why you didn't put a fire in the front room, being it was the first night; it would have been less—well, less embarrassing like," the farmer said, hunting in his brain for the right word and apparently not finding it.

"I don't know as there is any call to be embarrassed," Mrs. Morgan said, and the furrows in her face seemed to grow deeper. "I thought it was best to begin as we meant to end; and I didn't s'pose we would be likely to have fires in the front room of evenings now any more than we have had. This room has always been large enough and good enough for Lewis, and I suppose we can make a place for one more."

But she looked that moment as though the "one more" were a sore trial to her, which she endured simply because she must, and out of which she saw no gleam of comfort.

During this family discussion, John Morgan kept his feet in their elevated position on the upper hearth, and continued his steady, gloomy gaze into the fire. He was a young man, not yet twenty, but already his face looked not only gloomy but spiritless. It was not in every sense a good face; there were lines of sullenness upon it, and there were lines which, even thus early, might have been born of dissipation. Mrs. Morgan had been heard to say many a time that Lewis was a good boy, had always been a good boy, but who John took after she could not imagine; he was not a bit like the Morgans, and she was sure he did not favour her side of the house.

But, truth to tell, Lewis Morgan had at last disappointed his mother. Of course, he would get married some time—it was the way with young men; but he was still quite a young man, and she had hoped that he would wait a few years. And then she had hoped that, when the fatal day did come, he would choose one of the good, sensible, hard-working farmers' girls with which the country abounded, any one of whom would have esteemed it an honour to be connected with the Morgan family.

But to go to town for a wife, and then to plunge right into the midst of aristocracy, and actually bring away a daughter of Lyman Barrows, whose father once occupied a high position in the Government! Mrs. Morgan felt aggrieved. Farmers and farmers' wives and daughters had always been good enough for her; why were they not for her son?

This matter of family pride is a very queer thing to deal with. I doubt if you will not find it as strongly developed among the thrifty and intelligent classes of farmers as anywhere in this country. To be sure, there are different manifestations of pride. Assuredly Mrs. Morgan knew how to manifest hers.

"There they come!" declared the candle-snuffer; and her face grew red, and she dropped the snuffers into the tray with a bang. It was just as the old clock had made up its mind to speak, and it solemnly tolled out eight strokes.

"Dorothy!" said she of the darning-needle, severely. "I am ashamed of you. There is no occasion for you going into hysterics if they have come."

The feet on the upper hearth came down on the brick hearth with a louder bang than the snuffers had made. "I'm going to the barn," said their owner promptly. "Lewis will want to have his horse took care of; and I don't want to see none of 'em to-night. You needn't call me in, for I ain't coming."

And he dodged out at the back door just as the front one opened, and a shoving of trunks sounded on the oil-cloth floor of the great old-fashioned hall, and Lewis Morgan's voice said cheerily, "Where are you all?" and the mother rolled up the stocking, and stabbed it with the darning-needle, and shook out her check apron, and stood up to give them greeting; and Louise Morgan had reached her home.

[CHAPTER III.]

INTRODUCED.

Now Louise, despite all her previous knowledge of the Morgan family, had done just as people are always doing—planned their reception at the old homestead quite after the manner of life to which she had been accustomed, instead of arranging things from the Morgan standpoint. In imagination, she had seen her husband folded in his mother's arms, his bearded face covered with motherly kisses. "It is not reasonable to suppose that she will care to kiss me," she had said to herself, "but I will give her one little, quiet kiss, to show her how dear Lewis's mother is to me, and then I will keep myself in the background for the first evening. They will be so glad to get Lewis back that they will not have room for much notice of me."

Kisses! Hardly anything could be more foreign to Mother Morgan's life than those. It was actually years since she had kissed her grown-up son. She held out her hard old hand to him, and her heart beat quickly, and she felt a curious tremble all over her that she would have been ashamed to own, but with a mighty effort she controlled her voice, and said—

"Well, so you have got back safe, with all your rampaging around the world; I should think you had had enough of it. And this is your wife?"

And then Louise had felt the quick grasp and release of her hand, and had not realized the heart-beats; and Lewis had shaken hands with his father and his sister Dorothy, and had said—

"Father, this is my wife."

And the premature old man, with the premature gray hairs standing up over his head, had nodded to her, without even a hand-clasp, and said—

"I'm glad you are safe at home. You must be tired out; travelling is worse than ploughing all day. I never could see why folks who hadn't got to do it should take journeys."

And this was the home-coming! Two nights before, they had been in the old home, stopping there over night, after a two weeks' absence in another direction. How the mother had clasped her to her heart and cried over her! How the father had called her his "precious daughter," and wondered, with a quiver in his lips and a tremble in his voice, how they could let her go again! How Estelle—bright, beautiful, foolish Estelle—had hugged and caressed and rejoiced over her darling sister! What a contrast it was! It all came over her just then, standing alone in the centre of that yellow painted floor—the tremendous, the far-reaching, the ever-developing contrast between the home that had vanished from her sight and the new home to which she had come. She felt a strange, choking sensation, as if a hand were grasping at her throat; the dim light in the tallow candle gleamed and divided itself into many sparks, and seemed swinging in space; and but for a strong and resolute determination to do no such thing, the bride would have made her advent into the Morgan household a thing of vivid memory, by fainting away!

"Lewis!" called a soft, timid voice from somewhere in the darkness. Looking out at them from that bedroom door, poor little Nellie, with her shining eyes and her beating heart, could endure it no longer; and although frightened at her boldness, and dipping her yellow head under the sheet the minute the word was out, she had yet spoken that one low, eager word.

"O Nellie!" Lewis had exclaimed. "Are you awake? Louise, come and see Nellie."

Indeed she would; nothing in life looked so inviting to his young wife at that moment as the darkness and comparative solitude of that inner room. But Lewis had seized the tallow candle as he went—Dorothy, meantime, having roused sufficiently to produce another one; and as Louise followed him she caught a glimpse of the shining eyes and the yellow curls. A whole torrent of pent-up longing for home and love and tenderness flowed out in the kisses which were suddenly lavished on astonished little Nellie, as Louise nestled her head in the bed-clothes and gathered the child to her arms.

"She looks like you, Lewis," was the only comment she made; and Lewis laughed and flushed like a girl, and told his wife she was growing alarmingly complimentary; and Nellie looked from one to the other of them with great, earnest, soulful eyes, and whispered to Lewis that she "loved her almost as much as she did him!" with a long-drawn breath on the word "almost" that showed the magnitude of the offering at the shrine of his new wife. On the whole, it was Nellie that sweetened the memory of the home-coming, and stayed the tears that might have wet Louise Morgan's pillow that night.

As for John, he stayed in the barn, as he had planned, until the new-comers were fairly out of sight above stairs.

"He is a queer fellow," explained Lewis to his wife, as they went about their own room. "I hardly know how to take him. I don't think I have ever understood his character; I doubt if anybody does. He is pent-up; there is no getting at his likes or dislikes, and yet he has strong feelings. He has given my father a good many anxious hours already; and sometimes I fear there are many more in store for him from the same source."

And Lewis sighed. Already the burden of home life was dropping on him.

Louise was by this time so divided between the sense of loneliness that possessed her and the sense of curiosity over every article in and about her room, that she could not give to John the interest which the subject demanded. It was utterly unlike any room that she had ever seen before. A brilliant carpet, aglow with alternate stripes of red and green, covered the floor. Louise looked at it with mingled feelings of curiosity and wonder. How had it been made, and where? How did it happen that she had never seen a like pattern before? It did not occur to her that it was home-made; and if it had, she would not have understood the term. The two windows to the room were shaded with blue paper, partly rolled, and tied with red cord. There was a wood fire burning in a stove, which snapped, and glowed, and lighted up the strange colours and fantastic figures of the wall-paper; there were two or three old-fashioned chairs, comfortable, as all old-fashioned chairs are; and there was a high-post bedstead, curtained at its base by what Louise learned to know was a "valance," though what its name or use she could not on this evening have told. The bed itself was a marvel of height; it looked to the bewildered eyes of the bride as though they might need the services of a step-ladder to mount it; and it was covered with a tulip bed-quilt! This also was knowledge acquired at a later date. What the strangely-shaped masses of colour were intended to represent she had not the slightest idea. There was a very simple toilet-table, neatly covered with a towel, and its appointments were the simplest and commonest. A high, wide, deep-drawered bureau, and a pine-framed mirror, perhaps a foot wide and less than two feet long, completed the furnishings, save a couple of patchwork footstools under the windows.

Lewis set down the candlestick, which he had been holding aloft, on the little toilet-table, and surveyed his wife with a curious, half-laughing air, behind which was hidden an anxious, questioning gaze.

"My mother has an intense horror of the new invention known as kerosene," was his first explanatory sentence, with a comical side glance toward the blinking candle.

"Kerosene!" said Louise absently, her thoughts in such confusion that she could not pick them out and answer clearly. "Doesn't she like gas?" And then the very absurdity of her question brought her back to the present, and she looked up quickly in her husband's face, and, struggling with the pent-up tears, burst instead into a low, sweet, ringing laugh, which laugh he joined in and swelled until the low ceilings might almost have shaken over their mirth.

"Upon my word, I don't know what we are laughing at," he said at last: "but she is a brave little woman to laugh, and I'm thankful to be able to join her;" and he pushed one of the patchwork footstools over to where she had sunk on the other and sat down beside her.

"It is all as different as candle-light from sunlight, isn't it? That blinking little wretch over there on the stand furnished me with a simile. I haven't done a thing to this room, mainly because I didn't know what to do. I realized the absurdity of trying to put city life into it, and I didn't know how to put anything into it; I thought you would. In fact, I don't know but it fits country life. It has always seemed to me to be a nice, pleasant home room, but—well—well, the simple truth is, Louise, there is something the matter with it all, now that you are in it,—it doesn't fit you; but you will know how to repair it, will you not?" An anxious look was in his eyes, there was almost a tremble in his voice, the laughter had gone out of them so soon. It nerved Louise to bravery.

"We will not rearrange anything to-night," she said brightly; "we are too tired for planning. That great bed is the most comfortable thing I can think of; if we can only manage to get into it. What makes it so high, Lewis?"

Whereupon he laughed again, and she joined, laughing in that immoderate, nervous way in which people indicate that the laughter, hilarious as it appears, is but one remove from tears. And it was thus that the first evening under the new home-roof was spent.

John, coming from his hiding-place and going in stocking feet up the stairs, heard the outburst, and, curling his sour-looking lip, muttered: "They feel very fine over it; I hope it will last."

And the poor fellow had not the remotest idea that it would. Boy that he was, John Morgan was at war with life: he believed that it had ill-treated him; that to his fortunate elder brother had fallen all the joy, and to him all the bitterness. He was jealous because of the joy. He was not sure but he almost hated his brother's wife. Her low, clear laugh, as it rang out to him, sounded like mockery: he could almost make his warped nature believe that she was laughing at him, though she had never seen, perhaps never heard of him. If she had seen his face at that moment, doubtless her thoughts would have been of him; as it was, they revolved around the Morgan family.

"What about your sister Dorothy?" she asked her husband, diving into the bewilderments of the large trunk, in search of her toilet case.

"Dorothy is a good, warm-hearted girl, who has no—well—" and then he stopped; he did not know how to finish his sentence. It would not do to say she had no education, for she had been the best scholar in their country school, and during her last winter was reported to have learned all that the master could teach her.

She had been disappointed, it is true, that he had not known more; and Lewis had been disappointed, because he wanted her to go on, or go elsewhere, and get—what? He did not know how to name it. Something that his wife had to her very finger-tips, and something that Dorothy had not a trace of. What was the name of it? Was it to be learned from books? At least he had wanted her to try, and she had been willing enough, but Farmer Morgan had not.

"She has book-learning enough for a farmer's daughter," he had said sturdily. "She knows more about books now than her mother ever did; and if she makes one-half as capable a woman, she will be ahead of all the women there are nowadays."

So Dorothy had packed away her books, and settled down at her churning and baking and dish-washing; she took it quietly, patiently. Lewis did not know whether the disappointment was very great or not; in truth he knew very little about her. Of late he had known almost nothing of home, until within the last year failing health and the necessity for outdoor life had changed all his plans and nearly all his hopes in life.

Louise waited for a completion of the unfinished sentence, but her husband seemed unable to add to it. He bent over the valise and gave himself to the business of unpacking, with a puzzled air, as though he were trying to solve a problem that eluded him. His wife tried again.

"Lewis, why is she not a Christian?"

Now, indeed, he dropped the coat that he was unrolling, and, rising up, gave the questioner the full benefit of his troubled eyes. He was under the impression that he was pretty well acquainted with his wife; yet she certainly had the fashion of asking the most strange-sounding questions, perplexing to answer, and yet simple and straightforward enough in their tone.

"Why is it?" he repeated. "I do not know; my dear Louise, how could I know?"

"Well, doesn't it seem strange that a young lady, in this age of the world, surrounded by Christian influences, should go on year after year without settling that question?"

Her husband's answer was very thoughtfully given. "It seems exceedingly strange when I hear you speak of it, but I do not know that I ever thought of it in that sense before."

Then the unpacking went on in silence for a few minutes, until Louise interrupted it with another question.

"Lewis, what does she say when you talk with her about these matters? What line of reasoning does she use?"

It was so long before she received an answer that she turned from her work in surprise to look at him; then he spoke.

"Louise, I never said a word to her on this subject in my life. And that seems stranger to you than anything else?" he added at last, his voice low and with an anxious touch in it.

She smiled on him gently. "It seems a little strange to me, Lewis, I shall have to own; but I suppose it is different with brothers and sisters from what it is when two are thrown together constantly as companions. I have no brother, you know."

Do you know what Lewis thought of then? His brother John.

[CHAPTER IV.]

FROM DAWN TO DAYLIGHT.

IT was by the light of the blinking tallow candle that they made their toilets next morning. Louise roused suddenly, not a little startled at what she supposed were unusual sounds, issuing from all portions of the house, in the middle of the night.

"Do you suppose any one is sick?" she asked her husband. "There has been a banging of doors and a good deal of hurrying around for some minutes."

"Oh no," he said, reassuringly. "It is getting-up time. John is a noisy fellow, and Dorothy can make considerable noise when she undertakes. I suspect they are trying to rouse us."

"Getting-up time! why, it must be in the middle of the night."

"That depends on whether one lives in town or in the country. I shouldn't be greatly surprised if breakfast were waiting for us."

"Then let us hurry," said Louise, making a motion to do so; but her husband remanded her back to her pillow, while he made vigorous efforts to conquer the old-fashioned stove, and secure some warmth.

"But we ought not to keep them waiting breakfast," Louise said in dismay. "That is very disagreeable when everything is ready to serve. We have been annoyed in that way ourselves. Lewis, why didn't you waken me before? Haven't you heard the sounds of life for a good while?"

"Yes," said Lewis, "longer than I wanted to hear them. If they don't want breakfast to wait they shouldn't get it ready at such an unearthly hour. There is no sense in rousing up the household in the night. During the busy season it is a sort of necessity, and I always succumb to it meekly. But at this date it is just the outgrowth of a notion, and I have waged a sort of silent war on it for some time. I suppose I have eaten cold breakfasts about half the time this autumn."

"Cold breakfasts! Didn't your mother keep something warm for you?"

"Not by any manner of means did she. My mother would not consider that she was doing her duty to her son by winking at his indolent habits in any such fashion; she believes that it is his sacred duty to eat his breakfast by early candle-light, and if he sins in that direction it is not for her to smooth the punishment of the transgressor."

Louise laughed over the serio-comic tone in which this was said, albeit there was a little feeling of dismay in her heart; these things sounded so new, and strange, and unmotherly!

"Louise dear, I don't want to dictate the least in the world, and I don't want to pretend to know more than I do; but isn't that dress just a trifle too stylish for the country—in the morning, you know?"

This hesitating, doubtful sort of question was put to Mrs. Morgan somewhat later, after a rapid and apparently unpremeditated toilet.

She gave the speaker the benefit of a flash from a pair of roguish eyes as she said—

"Part of that sentence is very opportune, Lewis. You are evidently 'pretending to know more than you do.' This dress was prepared especially for a morning toilet in the country, and cost just fivepence a yard."

"Is it possible!" he answered, surveying her from head to foot with a comic air of bewilderment. "Then, Louise, what is it that you do to your dresses?"

"Wear them," she answered demurely. "And I shall surely wear this this morning; it fits precisely."

Did it? Her husband was in great doubt. He would not have liked to own it; he did not own it even to himself; but the truth was, he lived in a sort of terror of his mother's opinions. She was easily shocked, easily disgusted; the whole subject of dress shocked her, perhaps, more than any other. She was almost eloquent over the extravagance, the lavish display, the waste of time as well as money exhibited in these degenerate days in the decorations of the body. She even sternly hinted that occasionally Dorothy "prinked" altogether too much for a girl with brains. What would she think of Mrs. Lewis Morgan? The dress which troubled him was one of those soft neutral-tinted cottons so common in these days, so entirely unfashionable in the fashionable world that Louise had already horrified her mother, and vexed Estelle, by persisting in her determination to have several of them. Once purchased, she had exercised her taste in the making, and her selections of patterns and trimming "fitted the material perfectly," so Estelle had told her, meaning anything but a compliment thereby.

It was simplicity itself in its finishings; yet the pattern was graceful in its folds and draperies, and fitted her form to perfection. The suit was finished at the throat with a rolling collar, inside of which Louise had basted a very narrow frill of soft yellowish lace. The close-fitting sleeves were finished in the same way. A very tiny scarlet knot of narrow ribbon at the throat completed the costume, and the whole effect was such that her husband, surveying her, believed he had never seen her better dressed, and was sure his mother would be shocked. The bewilderment on his face seemed to strike his wife as ludicrous.

"Why, Lewis," she said gaily, "what would you have me wear?"

"I don't know, I am sure," he answered, joining her laugh. "Only, why should fivepence goods look like a tea-party dress on you?" Then they went down to breakfast.

Almost the first thought that the young wife had, as she surveyed the strange scene, was embodied in a wonderment as to what Estelle would say could she look in on them now.

That great, clean kitchen; the kettle steaming on the cook-stove, and the black "spider" still sizzling about the ham gravy that was left in it; the large-leaved table, spread; old-fashioned, blue earthenware dishes arranged on it, without regard to grace, certainly, whatever might be said of convenience. In the middle of the table sat the inevitable tallow candle, and another one blinked on the high mantlepiece, bringing out the shadows in a strange, weird way.

Seated at the foot of the table was John, in his shirt-sleeves, the mild winter morning having proved too trying for his coat. His father was still engaged in putting the finishing touches to his toilet by brushing his few spears of gray hair before the little glass in the further end of the room. Dorothy leaned against the window and waited, looking both distressed and cross.

"Come! Come! Come!" said the mother of this home, directly the stair-door had closed after the arrival of her new daughter. "Do let us get down to breakfast; it will be noon before we get the dishes out-of-the-way. Now, father, have we got to wait for you? I thought you were ready an hour ago. Come, Lewis; you must be hungry by this time."

The rich blood mounted to Lewis's cheeks. This was a trying greeting for his wife; he felt exactly as though he wanted to say that he thought so; but she brushed past him at that moment, laying a cool little hand for an instant on his. Was it a warning touch? Then she went over to the young man in the shirt-sleeves.

"Nobody introduces us," she said, in a tone of quiet brightness. "I suppose they think that brother and sister do not need introduction. I am Louise, and I am sure you must be John; let's shake hands on it." And the small, white hand was outstretched and waiting. What was to be done?

John, who was prepared to hate her, so well prepared that he already half did so—John (who never shook hands with anybody, least of all a woman; never came in contact with one if he could possibly help it) felt the flush in his face deepen until he knew he was the colour of a peony, but nevertheless slowly held forth his hard red hand, and touched the small white one, which instantly seized it in a cordial grasp. Then they sat down to breakfast.

Louise waited with bowed head, and was thrilled with a startled sense of unlikeness to home as she waited in vain. No voice expressed its thankfulness for many mercies; instead, the clatter of dishes immediately commenced. "Not one in the family save myself is a Christian." She remembered well that Lewis had told her so; but was he of so little moment in his father's house that the simple word of blessing would not have been received among them from his lips? It had not occurred to her that, because her husband was the only Christian in the household, therefore he sat at a prayer-less table.

Other experiences connected with that first meal in her new home were, to say the least, novel. Curiously enough, her imaginings concerning them all connected themselves with Estelle. What would Estelle think of a young lady who came collarless to the breakfast table; nay, more than that, who sat down to eat, in her father's and mother's presence, with uncombed hair, gathered into a frowzly knot in the back of her neck? What would Estelle have thought of Mrs. Morgan's fashion of dipping her own spoon into the bowl of sugar and then back again into her coffee? How would she have liked to help herself with her own knife to butter, having seen the others of the family do the same with theirs? How would she manage in the absence of napkins and would the steel forks spoil her breakfast? And how would she like fried ham, and potatoes boiled in the skin, for breakfast anyway?

The new-comer remembered that she had but three weeks ago assured Estelle that farmhouses were delightful places in which to spend summers. Was she so sure of that, even with this little inch of experience? To learn to appreciate the force of contrasts, one would only need a picture of the two breakfast tables which presented themselves to the mind of this young wife.

Aside from all these minor contrasts, there were others which troubled her more. She had resolved to be very social and informal with each member of this family; but the formidable question arose, what was she to be social about? Conversation there was none, unless Farmer Morgan's directions to John concerning details of farm work, and his answers to Lewis's questions as to what had transpired on the farm during his absence, could be called conversation.

Mrs. Morgan, it is true, contributed by assuring Dorothy that if she did not clean out the back kitchen this day she would do it herself, and that the shelves in the cellar needed washing off this very morning. Whatever it was that had occurred to put Dorothy in ill-humour, or whether it was ill-humour or only habitual sullenness, Louise did not know; certainly her brows were black. Would it be possible to converse with her? As the question put itself to her mind, it called up the merry by-play of talk with which Estelle was wont to enliven the home breakfast table, so sparkling and attractive in its flow that her father had accused her of setting a special snare for him, that he might miss his car.

If Estelle were at this table what would she talk about? It was entirely a new and strange experience to Louise to be at a loss what to talk about. Books! What had Dorothy read? She did not look as though she had read anything, or wanted to. Sewing! Well, the new sister was skilled with her needle. Suppose she said, "I know how to make my own dresses, and I can cut and fit my common ones; can you?" How abrupt it would sound, and what strange table talk for the pleasure of the assembled family! She caught herself on the verge of a laugh over the absurdity of the thing, and was as far as ever from a topic for conversation.

Meantime Lewis had finished his questionings and turned to her. "Louise, did you ever see any one milk? I suppose not. If it were not so cold you would like to go out and see Dorothy with her pet cow; she is a creature—quite a study."

Did he mean Dorothy, or the pet cow? It was clear to his wife that he was himself embarrassed by something incongruous in the breakfast scene; but she caught at his suggestion of a subject even while his mother's metallic voice was saying—

"Cold! If you call this a cold morning, Lewis, you must have been getting very tender since you were in the city. It is almost as mild as spring."

"Can you milk?" Louise was saying, meantime, eagerly to Dorothy. The eagerness was not assumed; she was jubilant, not so much over the idea of seeing the process of milking as over the fact that she had finally discovered a direct question to address to Dorothy, which must be answered in some form.

But, behold! Dorothy, flushing to her temples, looked down at her plate and answered, "Yes, ma'am," and directly choked herself with a swallow of coffee, and the avenue for conversation suddenly closed.

What was she to do? How it was to call such distorted attempts at talk by the pleasant word conversation! What "familiar interchange of sentiment" could she hope to get up with Dorothy about milking cows? What did people say about cows, anyway? She wished she had some knowledge, even the slightest, of the domestic habits of these animals; but she was honestly afraid to venture in any direction, lest she should display an ignorance that would either be considered affected or sink her lower in the family estimation. Suppose she tried some other subject with Dorothy, would she be likely to choke again?

Mrs. Morgan tried to help. "Dorothy milked two cows when she was not yet twelve years old!"

Whether it was the words, or the tone, or the intention, Louise could not tell; but she immediately had a feeling that not to milk two cows before one was twelve years old argued a serious and irreparable blunder in one's bringing up. She was meek and quiet-toned in her reply:—

"I never had the opportunity of even seeing the country when I was a little girl, only as we went to the sea-side, and that is not exactly like the country, you know. All mamma's and papa's relatives happened to live in town."

"It must be a great trial to a woman to have to bring up her children in a city. Ten chances to one if they don't get spoiled."

Mrs. Morgan did not say it crossly, nor with any intention of personality, but again Louise felt it to be almost a certainty that she was thought not to belong to that fortunate "one chance" which was not spoiled.

Mother Morgan startled her out of her wandering by addressing her directly—

"I hope you will be able to make out a breakfast. I suppose our style of living is not what you have been used to."

What could Louise say? It certainly was not, and she certainly could not affirm that she liked it better.

Her husband turned a certain troubled look on her. "Can't you eat a little?" he asked in an undertone.

Did she imagine it, or was he more anxious that his mother should not be annoyed than he was that her appetite should not suffer? Altogether, the young bride was heartily glad when that uncomfortable meal was concluded and she was back in that upper room. She went alone, her husband having excused himself from his father long enough to go with her to the foot of the stairs and explain that father wanted him a moment.

Do you think she fell into a passion of weeping directly the door of her own room shut her in, and wished that she had never left the elegancies of her city home or the sheltering love of her mother? Then you have mistaken her character. She walked to the window a moment and looked out on the stubby, partly frozen meadows that stretched away in the distance, she even brushed a tender tear, born of love for the old home and the dear faces there; but it was chased away by a smile as she bowed to her husband, who looked back to get a glimpse of her; and she knew then, as she had known before, that it was not hard to "forsake all others and cleave to him." Moreover, she remembered that marriage vows had brought her more than a wife's responsibilities. She was by them made a daughter and a sister to those whom she had not known before. They were not idle words to her, these two relationships. She remembered them each one: Father Morgan, with his old, worn face, and his heart among the fields and barns; Mother Morgan, with her cold eyes, and cold hand, and cold voice; Dorothy and John, and the fair, yellow-haired Nellie, whom a special touch of motherliness had left still sleeping that morning; and remembering them each, this young wife turned from the window, and, kneeling, presented them each by name and desire to her "elder Brother."

[CHAPTER V.]

BEDS AND BUTTON-HOLES.

How to fit in with the family life lived at the Morgan farmhouse was one of the puzzles of the new-comer. For the first time, Louise was in doubt how to pass her time, what to do with herself. Not that she had not enough to do. She was a young woman having infinite resources; she could have locked the door on the world downstairs, and, during her husband's absence in field or barn, have lived a happy life in her own world of reading, writing, sewing, planning. But the question was, would that be fulfilling the duties which the marriage covenant laid upon her? How, in that way, could she contribute to the general good of the family into which she had been incorporated, and which she had pledged herself before God to help to sustain? But, on the other hand, how should she set about contributing to the general good? Every avenue seemed closed.

After spending one day in comparative solitude, save the visits that her husband managed to pay, from time to time, to the front room upstairs, she, revolving the problem, lingered in the large kitchen the next morning, and, with pleasant face and kindly voice, said to Dorothy, "Let me help!" and essayed to assist in the work of clearing the family table—with what dire results!

Dorothy, thus addressed, seemed as affrighted as though an angel from heaven had suddenly descended before her and offered to wash the dishes; and she let slip, in her amazement, one end of the large platter, containing the remains of the ham, and a plentiful supply of ham gravy—which perverse stuff trickled and dripped, in zigzag lines, over the clean, coarse linen which covered the table. Dorothy's exclamation of dismay brought her mother quickly from the bedroom; and, then and there, she gave a short, sharp lecture on carelessness.

"What need had you to jump because you were spoken to?" she said, in severe sarcasm, to the blazing-cheeked Dorothy. "I saw you. One would think you had never seen anybody before, nor had a remark made to you. I would try to act a little more as though I had common sense if I were you. This makes the second clean table-cloth in a week! Now, go right away and wash the grease out, and scald yourself with boiling water to finish up the morning."

Then, to Louise: "She doesn't need your help; a girl who couldn't clear off a breakfast table alone, and wash up the dishes, would be a very shiftless sort of creature, in my opinion. Dorothy has done it alone ever since she was twelve years old. She isn't shiftless, if she does act like a dunce before strangers. I'm sure I don't know what has happened to her, to jump and blush in that way when she is spoken to; she never used to do it."

It was discouraging, but Louise, bent on "belonging" to this household, tried again.

"Well, mother, what can I do to help? Since I am one of the family I want to take my share of the duties. What shall be my work after breakfast? Come, now, give me a place in the home army, and let me look after my corner. If you don't, I shall go out to the barn and help father and Lewis!"

But Mrs. Morgan's strong, stern face did not relax; no smile softened the wrinkles or brightened the eyes.

"We have always got along without any help," she said—and her voice reminded Louise of the icicles hanging at that moment from the sloping roof above her window. "Dorothy and I managed to do pretty near all the work, even in summer time, and it would be queer if we couldn't now, when there is next to nothing to do. Your hands don't look as though you were used to work."

"Well, that depends," said Louise, looking down on the hands that were offending at this moment by their shapely whiteness and delicacy; "there are different kinds of work, you know. I have managed to live a pretty busy life. I don't doubt your and Dorothy's ability to do it all, but that isn't the point; I want to help; then we shall all get through the sooner, and have a chance for other kinds of work." She had nearly said "for enjoyment," but a glance at the face looking down on her changed the words.

Then they waited; the younger woman looking up at her mother-in-law with confident, resolute eyes, full of brightness, but also full of meaning; and the older face taking on a shade of perplexity, as if this were a phase of life which she had not expected, and was hardly prepared to meet.

"There's nothing in life, that I know of, that you could do," she said at last, in a slow, perplexed tone. "There's always enough things to be done; but Dorothy knows how, and I know how, and—"

"And I don't," interrupted Louise lightly. "Well, then, isn't it your bounden duty to teach me? You had to teach Dorothy, and I daresay she made many a blunder before she learned. I'll promise to be as apt as I can. Where shall we commence? Can't I go and dry those dishes for Dorothy?"

Mrs. Morgan shook her head promptly.

"She would break every one of 'em before you were through," she said grimly; "such a notion as she has taken of jumping, and choking, and spilling things! I don't know what she'll do next."

"Well, then, I'll tell you what I can do. Let me take care of John's room. Isn't that it just at the back of ours? I saw him coming from that door this morning. While you are at work down here, I can attend to that. May I?"

"Why, there's nothing to do to it," was Mrs. Morgan's prompt answer, "except to spread up the bed, and that takes Dorothy about three minutes. Besides, it is cold in there; you folks who are used to coddling over a fire would freeze to death. I never brought up my children to humour themselves in that way."

Louise, not wishing to enter into an argument concerning the advantages and disadvantages of warm dressing-rooms, resolved upon cutting this interview short.

"Very well, I shall spread up the bed then, if there is nothing else that I can do. Dorothy, remember that is my work after this. Don't you dare to take it away from me."

Lightly spoken, indeed, and yet with an undertone of decision in it that made Mrs. Morgan, senior, exclaim wrathfully, as the door closed after her daughter-in-law,—

"I do wish she would mind her own business! I don't want her poking around the house, peeking into places, under the name of 'helping!' As if we needed her help! We have got along without her for thirty years, and I guess we can do it now."

But Dorothy was still smarting under the sharpness of the rebuke administered to her in the presence of this elegant stranger, and did not in any way indicate that she heard her mother's comments, unless an extra bang of the large plate she was drying expressed her disapproval.

As for Louise, who will blame her that she drew a little troubled sigh as she ascended the steep staircase? And who will fail to see the connection between her thoughts and the action which followed? She went directly to an ebony box resting on her old-fashioned bureau, and drew from it a small velvet case, which, when opened, revealed the face of a middle-aged woman, with soft, silky hair, combed smooth, and wound in a knot underneath the becoming little breakfast cap, with soft lace lying in rich folds about a shapely throat, with soft eyes that looked out lovingly upon the gazer, with lips so tender and suggestive, that even from the picture they seemed ready to speak comforting words.

"Dear mother!" said Louise, and she pressed the tender lips again and again to hers. "'As one whom his mother comforteth.' Oh, I wonder if John could understand anything of the tenderness in that verse?" Then she held back the pictured face and gazed at it, and something in the earnest eyes and quiet expression recalled to her words of help and strength, and suggestions of opportunity; so that she closed the case, humming gently the old, strong-souled hymn, "A charge to keep I have," and went in search of broom, and duster, and sweeping-cap, and then penetrated to the depths of John's room; the development of Christian character in this young wife actually leading her to see a connection between that low-roofed back corner known as "John's room," and the call to duty which she had just sung—

"A charge to keep I have,
A God to glorify."

What, through the medium of John's room! Yes, indeed. That seemed entirely possible to her. More than that, a glad smile and a look of eager desire shone in her face as she added the lines—

"A never-dying soul to save
And fit it for the sky."

What if—oh, what if the Lord of the vineyard had sent her to that isolated farmhouse to be the link in the chain of events which he designed to have end in the saving and fitting for glory of John Morgan's never-dying soul!

Possibly you would have thought it was a sudden descent into the prosaic, if you could have stepped with her into the low-roofed room. Can I describe to you its desolation, as it appeared to the eyes of the cultured lady? She stopped on the threshold, stopped her song, and gazed with a face of dismay! Bare-floored; the roof on the eastern side sloping down to within three feet of the floor; one western window, small-paned, curtainless; one wooden-seated chair, on which stood the inevitable candlestick, and the way in which the wick of the candle had been permitted to grow long and gutter down into the grease told a tale of dissipation of some sort indulged in the night before that would not fail to call out the stern disapproval of the watchful mother. There was not the slightest attempt at anything like appointments, unless an old-fashioned, twisted-legged stand that, despite its name, would not "stand" without being propped, having a ten-inch square glass hung over it, might be called an attempt. The bundle of very much twisted and tumbled bed-clothes in the corner, resting on the four-post bedstead, completed every suggestion of furniture which that long, low, dark room contained!

"Poor fellow!" said Louise, speaking her thoughts aloud, as the scene grew upon her. "Why shouldn't he 'give his father some troubled hours'? What else could they expect? How absolutely pitiful it is that this room and that downstairs kitchen are really the only places where the young man can spend a leisure hour! How has Lewis submitted to it?"

Yet, even as she spoke that last sentence, she felt the cold eyes, and remembered the stern mouth, of his mother, and realized that Lewis was powerless.

At the same moment I shall have to confess to you that the little new-comer into the home set her lips in a quiet, curious fashion that she had, which read to those well acquainted with her this sentence: "I shall not be powerless; see if I will." And, somehow, you couldn't help believing that she would not. She had a very curious time restoring order to that confused bed. It must be borne in mind that she had never before made up a chaff bed. The best quality of hair mattress had to do with all her experience of bed-making. This being the case, the initiated will not be surprised to hear that she tugged off the red and brown patchwork coverlet three times before she reduced that bed to the state of levelness which comported with her ideas. Then the pillows came in for their share of anxiety. They were so distressingly small! How did John manage with such inane, characterless affairs? She puffed them, and tossed them, and patted them, with all the skilled touches which a good bed-maker knows how to bestow, but to very little purpose. They were shrinking, shame-faced pillows still. The coarse factory sheet, not yet "bleached," was first made smooth, and then artistically rolled under the red and brown coverlet; and, while it looked direfully unlike what Louise would have desired, yet, when the whole was finished, even with such materials, the bed presented a very different appearance from what it did after undergoing Dorothy's "spreading up."

Then, when the sweeping was concluded, Louise stood and thought. What was to be done with that room? How much would she dare to do? She had determined to make no sort of change in her own room at present; she would not even change the position of the great old bedstead, though this was a sacrifice on her part only to be appreciated by those who are able, on their first entrance into a room, to see, by a sort of intuition, the exact spot where every article of furniture should be in order to secure the best effects, and to whom the ill arrangement is a positive pain. Louise had seen, even on her first entrance into her room, that the most awkward possible spot for the bedstead had been chosen; nevertheless she heroically left it there. But she looked with longing eyes on that twisted table in John's room. How she would have enjoyed selecting one of those strong, white, serviceable tidies, and overspreading the marred top with it, and placing there a book or two, and a perfume bottle, or some delicate knick-knack, to give the room a habitable air. For fully five minutes she stood shivering in the cold, trying to determine the important question. Then she resolutely shook her head, and said aloud, "No, it won't do; I must wait," and went downstairs with her dust-pan.

During her short absence the dishes had been whisked into their places, the kitchen made clean, and both mother and daughter were seated at their sewing. Mrs. Morgan eyed the trim figure in sweeping-cap and gloves, a broom and dust-pan in hand, with no approval in her glance.

"I should think you were a little too much dressed up for such work," she said, producing at last the thought which had been rankling for two days. This was Louise's opportunity.

"I am dressed just right for work."

"Oh no," she said pleasantly. "I am dressed just right for ordinary work. Why, mother, my dress cost less than Dorothy's; hers is part woollen, and mine is nothing but cotton."

This remark brought Dorothy's eyes from her work; and fixed them in admiring wonder on the well-dressed lady before her. Being utterly unacquainted with materials and grades of quality, and judging of dress only by its effects, it was like a bewildering revelation that the dress which to her looked elegant, cost less than her own. There flashed just then into her heart the possibility that some day she too might have something pretty.

Louise did not wait for her revelation to be commented upon, but drew nearer to the workers. Mrs. Morgan was sewing rapidly on a dingy calico for herself.

"Oh, let me make the button-holes," said, or rather exclaimed, the new daughter, as though it were to be counted a privilege. "I can make beautiful ones, and I always made mother's and Estelle's."

Now, it so happened that Mrs. Morgan, with all her deftness with the needle, and she had considerable, was not skilled in that difficult branch of needle-work, the making of button-holes. Moreover, though she considered it an element of weakness, and would by no means have acknowledged it, she hated the work with an absolute hatred, born of a feeling, strong in such natures as hers, of aversion toward anything which they cannot do as well, if not better, than others. The thought of securing well-made button-holes, over which she had not to struggle, came with a sense of rest to her soul, and she answered, more kindly than Louise had heard her speak before,—

"Oh, I don't want you to bother with my button-holes."

"I shall not," said Louise brightly. "Button-holes never bother me; I like to work them as well as some people like to do embroidery."

Then she went to the sink in the kitchen, and washed her hands in the bright tin basin, and dried them on the coarse, clean family towel. Presently she came, thimble and needle-case in hand, and established herself on one of the yellow wooden chairs, to make button-holes in the dingy calico; and, with the delicate stitches in those button-boles, she worked an entrance-way into her mother-in-law's heart.

[CHAPTER VI.]

A NEW SERVICE FOR THE SABBATH.

"AT what hour do you have to start for church?"

This was the question which Louise asked of her husband on Saturday evening, as she moved about their room making preparations for the next morning's toilet.

"Well," he said, "it is three miles, you know. We make an effort to get started by about half-past nine, though sometimes we are late. It makes hurrying work on Sunday morning, Louise. I don't know how you will like that."

"I shouldn't think there would be room in one carriage for all the family. Is there?"

"Room for all who go," Lewis said gravely.

"All who go! why, they all go to church, don't they?"

"Why, no; in fact, they never all go at one time; they cannot leave the house, you know."

Louise's bewildered look proved that she did not know.

"Why not?" she asked, with wonderment in tone and eyes. "What will happen to the house?"

A new graft on the family tree

"Will you have a card, please?"

A NEW GRAFT

ON THE FAMILY TREE.

BY

P A N S Y

[ISABELLA ALDEN]

AUTHOR OF "A HEDGE FENCE," "SIDE BY SIDE,"

"STRIVING TO HELP," ETC.

London:

T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW.

EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.

1902

Contents.