UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAIJFORNi 
 "' AT LOS ANGEIE C
 
 IDYLS IN DRAB
 
 IT. W. D. Howells' Works. 
 
 IN SHILLING VOLUMES. 
 
 The Shado\v of a Dream. 
 A Foregone Conclusion. 
 A Chance Acquaintance. 
 Their Wedding Journey. 
 
 The Undiscovered Country. 
 
 The Rise of Silas Lapha 
 
 The Lady of the Aro( 
 
 2 vols. 
 Out of the Question 
 
 LIBRARY EDITIONS. 
 Impressions and Experiences. 1 vol. 
 April Hopes. 1 vol. . 
 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 2 vols. . 
 Annie Kilburn. 1 vol. 
 Indian Summer. 1 vol. 
 The Minister's Charge. 1vol. . 
 
 Mercy. 1 vol 
 
 A Modern Instance. 2 vols. 
 A Woman s Reason. 2 vols. 
 Dr. Breen's Practice. 1 vol. 
 Modern Italian Poets. 1vol. 
 The Shadow of a Dream. 1 vol. . 
 The World of Chance. 1vol. 
 A Traveller from Altruria 1 vol. 
 Their Wedding Journey. vol. . 
 
 6 
 12 6 
 
 Edinburgh : DAVID DOUGLAS, 10 Castle Street. 
 
 London : SIMPKIX, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, 
 
 KENT & Co. , LTD.
 
 IDYLS IN DRAB 
 
 WILLIAM D. HOWELLS 
 
 Author s Edition 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 DAVID DOUGLAS, CASTLE STREET 
 
 1896
 
 EDINBURGH: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE foi 
 
 DAVID DOUGLAS 
 LOKDON : SlMPKIN, MARSHALL AND Co.
 
 <T) 
 
 
 
 bv 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING, . . 9 
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING, . - 141 
 
 3277S9
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING
 
 THE DAY OF THEIE WEDDING. 
 
 I. 
 
 WHEN the train slowed before drawing 
 into the station at Fitchbnrg, Sister 
 Althea took up her bag from the floor, and 
 began to collect her paper parcels into her 
 lap, as if she were going to leave the car. 
 Then she sat gripping the bag to her side 
 and staring out into the night, blotched 
 everywhere with the city lights and the 
 railway signals red and green and orange. 
 From time to time she looked round over 
 her shoulder into the car, up and down the 
 aisle, and again set her face towards the 
 window, and held it so rigidly, to keep her- 
 self from turning any more, that it hurt her 
 neck. 
 
 The car was a day-coach en a night train, 
 and most of the few passengers were making 
 preparations for leaving it. An old gentle-
 
 10 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 man in the seat across the aisle, whom she 
 had asked more than once whether the train 
 was sure to stop at Fitchburg, was already 
 buttoned up in a light overcoat, which he 
 had the effect of wearing in compliance with 
 charges against exposing himself to the 
 night air. He sat humming to himself 
 while he held fast an umbrella and a bundle 
 such as one married sister might send to 
 another by their father ; it was in several 
 sections of wrapping-paper, and was tied 
 with tape. He leaned over towards Sister 
 Althea, and asked, benevolently, "Was you 
 expecting to meet friends in Fitchburg?" 
 
 Sister Althea started and looked round. 
 He repeated the question, and she gasped 
 out, " Nay ; I am not expecting friends 
 to meet me." She had framed her reply 
 with a certain mechanical exactness which 
 he seemed to feel. 
 
 " Oh ! ah ! From the Family at Vardley, 
 I presume ? ' 
 
 Sister Althea faltered a moment before she 
 answered, "Yee." 
 
 She let her head droop forward a little, 
 and with her Shaker bonnet slanting down- 
 ward over her deeply hidden face she looked 
 like a toucan, except for the gaiety of 
 colour with which Nature mocks that
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. II 
 
 strange bird's grotesqueness. She was in 
 Shaker drabs as to her prim gown, and her 
 shawl crossed fichu- wise upon her breast ; 
 her huge bonnet was covered with a dove- 
 coloured satin. To the eye that could not 
 catch a glimpse of her face, or rightly 
 measure her figure as she sat dejected for 
 the moment following her speech, she must 
 have looked little and old. 
 
 The friendly person in the seat opposite 
 began humming to himself again. He stood 
 up before the train halted, and he said to 
 Sister Althea, as he turned to leave the car, 
 " Well, I wish you good evening." 
 
 "Good evening," said Sister Althea 
 faintly ; and now, when the train stopped 
 at last, and the noises of the station began 
 to make themselves heard outside, with the 
 bray of a supper-gong above all, she jumped 
 to her feet and started into the aisle as if 
 she were going to leave the car too. She 
 even made some steps towards the door ; 
 then she came back, and, after a moment's 
 hesitation, she sat down again, and remained 
 as motionless as before. 
 
 People came and took places, and arranged 
 their wraps, and put their parcels into the 
 racks, and settled themselves for their 
 journey. Among the rest a woman came in,
 
 12 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 followed by a man with a child. When he 
 had put the child in the seat beside her, he 
 stood talking with her till she drove him 
 away. She said she did not want him to 
 get off after the cars began to move. He 
 laughed and kissed her, and after he had 
 got almost to the door he came back and 
 kissed her again. Sister Althea trembled at 
 each kiss. When the man lifted the little 
 one and kissed it, and put it down again on 
 the seat beside its mother, the tears came 
 into her eyes. 
 
 " Well, give my love to all the folks ! " he 
 called back from the door. 
 
 "Yes, yes!" said the woman. "Do get 
 off, quick ! " 
 
 He laughed again, and in looking back 
 from the door he struck against a young 
 man who was coming in. "Oh, excuse me I " 
 he said, and went out while the young man 
 came forward. He looked from side to side 
 keenly, and then, with a smile that flashed 
 through Sister Althea's tears, he came 
 swiftly down the aisle to where she sat, near 
 the end of the car. 
 
 " Well, well ! " he cried, and he stood a 
 moment with his hands upon the seat-backs, 
 looking down at her where she sat, helpless 
 to move her bag and parcels from her side.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 13 
 
 "A'n't you going to let me set with you, 
 Althea ? A'n't you going to look round and 
 let me see if it 's really you ? First, I didn't 
 know but it was Eldress Susan." 
 
 "'Sh ! " said Sister Althea, and she turned 
 up towards him the deep tunnel of her bon- 
 net, with her young face at the bottom of it, 
 and clutched her parcels into her lap. 
 
 He swung her bag to the floor, and let 
 himself sink easily into the seat, and stretched 
 his arm along the top behind her. "Oh, I 
 guess she won't hear us," said the young 
 man. " Did you know me when I came into 
 the car? I don't believe you did!" He 
 laughed, and his eyes shone. They were 
 gay blue eyes, and his hair, now that he 
 took his soft hat off, had glints of gold in 
 the dun tone that the close shingling of the 
 barber gave it. His face was clean shaven 
 and boyishly handsome. He was dressed in 
 a new suit of diagonals which betrayed the 
 clothing-store ; but his figure was not vulgar, 
 though his hands, thrusting out of the coat- 
 sleeves without the shirt- cuffs that might 
 have partly hidden them, were large and 
 red, and rough with work. "I saw you 
 through the window as I came along the 
 platform outside, and I wanted to stop and 
 watch you. But you had your head down,
 
 14 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 as if you wa'n't feeling any too bright, and 
 I hurried right in. I thought you would be 
 frightened if I didn't come in as soon as the 
 cars stopped. But I was waiting here so 
 long expecting the train that I forgot to get 
 my bag checked till the last minute, and I 
 had to run and do it after you got in. That 's 
 what kept me. Did you think I wa'n't going 
 to be here, after all ! " He let his arm 
 drop from the seat-top, and he sought with 
 his the little hand lying weak on the seat 
 between them. It closed upon his fingers 
 at their touch, and then tried to free itself, 
 and then trembled and remained quiet. 
 "Oh, I guess I did frighten you," he 
 murmured fondly. 
 
 "Hush! Yee," said Althea. "But I 
 knew you would be sure to be here. I 
 wasn't afraid, but I was scared a little. 
 I was anxious. When you came in I could 
 see it was you, but you looked so strange." 
 She cast a glance up and down the car. 
 
 "Don't you like it?" he asked, with a 
 smile of innocent pride and a downward 
 look at his clothes. 
 
 "Yee, yee," she said. "But, Lorenzo, 
 do you think do you think you had ought 
 to sit in the same seat with me so close ? 
 Won't folks "
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 15 
 
 Lorenzo laughed securely. "Think I 
 ought to set across the aisle, same as in 
 meeting ? I guess folks won't mind us 
 much." In fact, in the going and coming 
 and settling in place no one seemed to notice 
 them. " If they do, they '11 think I 'm just 
 your brother or some relation. It 's this old 
 bonnet, if anything, that will make them 
 look. I thought Friend Ella Shewall was 
 going to lend you a hat." 
 
 " Yee, she was. But I didn't get to her 
 house till it was almost time for the cars, 
 and then we had to just race to the depot. 
 I 've got the hat here in this paper, and 
 that 's a sack in this bundle. I hadn't time 
 to put it on, either. I was almost ready to 
 drop when I reached Friend Ella's." He 
 peered into the depths of the bonnet she 
 turned towards him, and she added: "I 
 ran nearly the whole way from Harshire to 
 the Junction." 
 
 "Kan?" 
 
 "Yee. I couldn't get out of the house 
 without some of the Family seeing me before 
 dusk ; and if they had I should have died. 
 I was so ashamed, Lorenzo, and felt so mean, 
 I can't tell you ! I kept close to the walls 
 and in the woods all I could, and I had this 
 bag "
 
 l6 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 Lorenzo stooped forward and lifted the 
 bag from the floor. "You carried that all 
 the way from Harshire to the Junction ? " 
 
 "Yee." 
 
 " Well ! " 
 
 "I didn't feel it. It wasn't the bag that 
 was so heavy. Lorenzo, do you think 
 we 're doing right ? " 
 
 " I know we are ! Why, Althea, it 's what 
 everybody does in the world-outside." 
 
 "In the world-outside, yee." 
 
 "Well, we're in the world-outside, ain't 
 we ? " 
 
 "Yee, I presume we are. We are going 
 to be of the earthly order, Lorenzo ; we are 
 going to give up the angelic life ! Have you 
 thought enough of it, Lorenzo? Do you 
 think you have ? Because if you haven't " 
 
 " Why, haven't we both thought of it till 
 we couldn't think any more ? What did 
 Friend Ella Shewall say? Didn't she say 
 that we ought to take our feelin' for each 
 other as a sign from spirit-land that we were 
 meant for each other from all eternity ? " 
 
 "Yee ; but she isn't living with her own 
 husband ; she 's trying to get a divorce from 
 him, and she used to be so fond of him." 
 
 "Well, then, the signs failed in her 
 case "
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. I'J 
 
 " Oh, don't laugh at it, Lorenzo ! If they 
 failed in ours, what should we have? Am 
 I worth all you're risking for me in this 
 world and the next ? Think of it, Lorenzo ! 
 I can get out at the next stopping-place and 
 go back to the Family ; I know they '11 let 
 
 me ; and you Think of it ! Am I worth 
 
 it ? " She spoke in a low, intense whisper. 
 
 " Am / ? " retorted the young man lightly. 
 
 " Oh yee ! You are ! I 'd go through it 
 all for you." 
 
 "Then I guess that settles it." 
 
 * ' Nay, nay ; it doesn't ! I 'm wicked, and 
 that 's why I feel so. You don't know how 
 bad I am. I deceived I It was all right for 
 you, for you left the Family open and above 
 board, and you told the Trustees you were 
 going, and you made them give back your 
 property and everything ; but I stole away 
 like a thief in the night ; and I made Friend 
 Ella take part in my deceit ; and, Lorenzo, 
 I don't believe there 's going to be any end 
 to it. I 've told two lies already, here in 
 this very car just before it stopped. There 
 was a man asked me whether I expected to 
 meet friends at Fitchburg, and I said nay ; 
 and he asked me if I wasn't from the Family 
 at Vardley, and I said yee, I was, and ' 
 
 "He no business to asked you anything,'
 
 1 8 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 said Lorenzo hotly, "and I d'know as you 
 call it lyin', anyway. I a'n't friends in the 
 sense he meant, and Vardley and Harshire, 
 it's almost the same thing, and it don't 
 matter which Family you come from, so 
 you're out of it." 
 
 "Do you think so, Lorenzo?" 
 
 " Yee, I do. And now look here, Althea ; 
 you 're nervous, and you can't see things in 
 the true light, and so everything looks wrong 
 to you. We 're doing what we have a per- 
 fect right to do, and what everybody in the 
 world-outside does, as I said before. If you 
 had to steal away, as you call it, from the 
 Family, whose fault was it ? 'Twa'n't yours. 
 You did it, if anything, to save their feel- 
 in's, didn't you ? " 
 
 "Yee, I presume so." 
 
 "Don't you know you did? Now I 
 want you to try and look at it in the light 
 of the world-outside ; for that's all the 
 light we've got now, or that we're going 
 to have." 
 
 A little troubled sigh exhaled from the 
 depths of the bonnet, and Lorenzo threw 
 himself back in despair. ' ' Oh, well, if that 's 
 the way you 're goin' to feel about it." 
 
 "Nay, nay, Lorenzo ! I'm not going to. 
 I shall be all right in a minute. I 'm just
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. IQ 
 
 nervous, that 's all. I think just as you do 
 about it. Wasn't I perfectly willing and 
 glad to do it?" 
 
 "I guess you wa'n't half so willing nor 
 half so glad as I was," said the young man, 
 and now he drooped towards her again. 
 "And, as you say, I had the easiest part of 
 it, too, as far forth as getting away from the 
 Family went. But, Althea," he added, with 
 a touch of pride, " I haven't had a very easy 
 time since I've been in the world-outside. 
 'Ta'n't but a few days, but it seems as if it 
 was years, worrying about you all the while, 
 and trying to sell my lot in Fitchburg, and 
 look up something for me to do when we 
 get back." 
 
 " Yee, we have got to think of that now, 
 I suppose," said Althea. " In the Family 
 it came without our thinking." 
 
 " Yee, too many things came there with- 
 out our thinking," said Lorenzo resentfully. 
 " Not that I want to talk against the Family. 
 I presume I feel just as you do about that. 
 Our own fathers and mothers couldn't have 
 been better to us. But if we was to have 
 each other, we had to leave 'em. There 
 wa'n't any two ways about it. And I guess 
 I do like to think for myself, even of my 
 bread and butter. And I guess I've ar-
 
 2O THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 ranged for all that. I'm going into the 
 drug business with Friend Nason." 
 
 " That used to come and buy our herbs at 
 Harshire ? " 
 
 Lorenzo nodded. " It 's just the place for 
 me. He 's going to put a new remedy on 
 the market for lung difficulty Pulmine, he 
 calls it, and he wants me, because I know 
 about herbs ; it 's going to be purely veget- 
 able. He's bought my lot, too, and he's 
 advanced me a hundred dollars on it." The 
 young fellow leaned a little nearer and 
 tapped his breast pocket. " I 've got it with 
 me ! And I J ve seen the nicest little set of 
 rooms for us to go to house-keeping in when 
 we get back. Friend Nason calls it a flat ; 
 and I guess when you see that kitchen, 
 Althea ! Friend Nason says it's just as 
 well we 're going to Saratoga, for we sha'n't 
 have to get a licence in York State ; and if 
 it had to be in Fitchburg, and we was to 
 settle down there, right from the Family, it 
 might make talk. But if we come back just 
 like anybody else from the world-outside 
 it'll all blow over before anybody notices. 
 He wouldn't want it to get into the news- 
 papers any more than we would or the 
 Family would. "
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 THE train, which had started long before, 
 advanced by smooth leaps through the 
 dark, and the rhythmical clangour of the 
 wheels upon the rails lost itself in Lorenzo's 
 tones while he talked on and mapped out 
 the future to Althea. Already, though he 
 had been so few days in the world-outside, 
 he knew many things unknown to her, and 
 he looked at everything from a point of view 
 that she could not yet imagine. He used 
 words that she had never heard before, and 
 he used familiar phrases in a new sense. 
 He spoke low, and not to lose anything he 
 said she had to turn her deep bonnet towards 
 him, and peer up into his face with eyes so 
 still and solemn in their fixity that at last 
 he laughed out. 
 
 "What are you laughing at?" she half 
 grieved. 
 
 " Oh, nothing. Your eyes down there in 
 that old bonnet made me think of a rabbit 
 that I got into a hole once, and it kept
 
 22 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 looking up at me. What is there to scare 
 anybody, anyway, Althea ? " 
 
 " Nothing. I 'm not scared now." 
 
 "Well, I believe it's that bonnet, after 
 all. Why don't you take the old thing off? " 
 
 " I don't know. They would look." 
 
 She glanced round the car at their fellow- 
 passengers, and Lorenzo did so too. "Well, 
 let them look ! " he said, with a petulant 
 impulse ; and then, as if he had given way 
 too far, he added, "They've all got their 
 backs turned, anyway." 
 
 " So they have ! " said Althea. " I took 
 this seat at the end of the car on purpose, 
 so they wouldn't notice me so much. I for- 
 got about that." 
 
 Still she did not offer to remove her 
 bonnet, and he repeated, " Why don't you 
 take the old thing off ? " 
 
 " Do you truly want me to ? " 
 
 " Yee ; I want to see how you '11 look." 
 
 " Why, you know already how I look with 
 my cap on." 
 
 " Got that on too ? " 
 
 "Yee." 
 
 " Oh, what 's the use of yeeing and nay ing 
 it all the time, Althea ? We 've got to say 
 yes and no after this." 
 
 "You said yee yourself half a minute 
 ago."
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 23 
 
 "Did I?" asked Lorenzo; and after a 
 moment's thought, he said, "Well, so I did," 
 and he laughed at himself. ' ' But it 's all 
 that old bonnet makes me do it. I say yes 
 to other folks straight enough. Do take 
 it off ! " 
 
 " Well, I will, if you want I should so 
 very much," said Althea, and she kept 
 watching his face while she began to undo 
 the bonnet-strings. 
 
 " Want I should help you any ? " 
 
 " Nay ; I guess I can get along." 
 
 " There's that nay again ! " said Lorenzo 
 desperately, and they both laughed. "Take 
 off your cap, too. Wouldn't you just as 
 lives ? " 
 
 " Yee, if you say so." 
 
 " There it goes again ! " And they laughed 
 together, but very softly, so that the other 
 passengers should not notice. The woman 
 with the child was making up a bed on the 
 seat in front of her for the little one ; she 
 looked over her shoulder a moment, but 
 she did not seem to take them in with her 
 vague glance. Althea stopped untying her 
 bonnet-strings, and then went on. She lifted 
 the drab tunnel from her head at last, and 
 showed the wire-framed gauze cap, closely 
 fitted to her head. "Now the cap," said 
 the young man, and she untied that too,
 
 24 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 and took it off, and turned her face full 
 upon him. 
 
 She looked like a pretty boy, with her 
 dark hair cropped to her head all round, 
 and her severe turn-down collar, which came 
 so high up on her throat that her soft round 
 chin almost touched it. She had dark eyes, 
 very tender and truthful, a little straight 
 nose, and a mouth that smiled unspeakable 
 question at the young man with its red 
 lips ; delicate brows arched themselves 
 above her dove-like eyes, and her forehead 
 was a smooth and white wall to the edge of 
 her hair. The ugly bonnet had served well 
 to keep her complexion fair; its in- doors 
 pallor had now a faint flush in it. 
 
 Lorenzo caught his breath, and turned his 
 face with a slight cough. 
 
 "What is the matter? Have you got a 
 cold ? " she asked. 
 
 " Nay. It seemed as if my heart skipped 
 a beat. I guess it was the surprise. " 
 
 "Do I surprise you very much, Lorenzo?" 
 her pretty lips entreated fondly. "Do I 
 look so very funny ? You made me do it ! " 
 
 "Nay, nay ! You look beautiful, Althea. 
 I don't know as I ought to say it, Althea, 
 but I didn't know how beautiful you was 
 before." .He stared at her so helplessly
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 25 
 
 and awe-strickenly that she could not help 
 laughing. 
 
 " You're fine-appearing, too, Lorenzo. I 
 noticed it when you came into the car. I 
 presume it 's my hair that makes me look so 
 funny. But it isn't half as short as yours," 
 she said, with an arch glance at his hair 
 as far as it showed itself under his hat. He 
 took his hat off, and she pressed her hand 
 against her mouth to keep from laughing 
 too loud. " I guess we 're a pair of them ! " 
 
 He still sat embarrassed, looking at her 
 and studying every little motion of her 
 head and face as she put her cap inside 
 her bonnet, and made as if to tie the string 
 of the bonnet over both. "But maybe," 
 she said, "you want I should put them on 
 again ? " 
 
 "Nay," he began, and she mocked him 
 with "Nay! There it is again!" But he 
 would not laugh. 
 
 " Althea, I don't hardly feel as if I had 
 any right to you. It's all well enough to 
 talk, but I didn't know that till you looked 
 the way you do look ; and if you say, I '11 
 give up right now." 
 
 "And what shall 7 do if you give up 
 now?" she asked, with eyes full of laughter. 
 
 "That's true," he sighed.
 
 26 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 "I didn't know how well you looked, 
 either, till I saw you with that suit of 
 clothes on." 
 
 "Do you like them?" he asked, with a 
 proud glance at the sleeves of his coat and 
 the legs of his trousers. "I had to pay 
 twenty dollars for the suit. Friend Nason 
 thought it was a good deal he went with 
 me but he said he guessed I better have 
 them if I was going off with you ; I 'd get 
 more comfort out of them than what I 
 would a cheaper suit." 
 
 "Yee," said Althea thoughtfully. "If 
 we 're in the world-outside we have got to 
 do the same as the rest. " She drew a little 
 away from him to add, with a touch of 
 tender reproach, "But I began to feel 
 foolish about you, Lorenzo, long before I 
 saw you in that suit of clothes as foolish 
 as I ever could." 
 
 "And I felt foolish about you when I 
 couldn't hardly see your face in the bottom 
 of that bonnet, let alone know what a 
 pretty head you had, or anything. It was 
 something the way you walked I 'd know 
 and your your waist, Althea " 
 
 She turned away from him to take up 
 the parcel on the other side. She put it 
 in her lap, and asked, "Do you want I
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. VJ 
 
 should show you the sack Friend Ella lent 
 me? " 
 
 "Why, yee ; of course ! " 
 
 "She said it was quite the fashion." 
 Althea undid it and held it up and whirled 
 it about, so that the jet trimming would 
 show, and she made him feel the texture of 
 the silk. ' ' Now, I '11 try it on if you want 
 I should." She flung it across his knees, 
 and unpinned the Shaker shawl from over 
 her breast, and let it fall from her shoulders. 
 She stopped suddenly with a fiery flush. 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Lorenzo. He looked 
 in the direction of her eyes, and saw one of 
 the men passengers coming straight down 
 the car towards them ; but the man went 
 on to the water-cooler in the corner just 
 beyond them, and after he had solemnly 
 filled himself up from the tank there he 
 lumbered back to his place again at the 
 other end of the car. They looked at each 
 other as people do who have had a narrow 
 escape. Althea pulled the shawl up on her 
 shoulders again. "I guess I'll wait till 
 morning to put it on." 
 
 "Yee, j.ust as well," said Lorenzo, and he 
 could not have seen the filmy shade of 
 disappointment that passed over her face. 
 "What are you going to do with that old 
 thing ? "
 
 28 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 He touched her Shaker bonnet, and she 
 glanced down at it. "Oh, keep it, I pre- 
 sume," she sighed "keep it always. Any 
 rate, I shall keep it till morning." She tied 
 it up with the paper that had wrapped her 
 sack. 
 
 Lorenzo rose from the seat and stood 
 beside it. "Look here, Althea, I'm going 
 back into the sleeping-car here to get a 
 place for you, so you can rest comfortable. I 
 don't want you should sit up here all night." 
 
 "What are you going to do ? " 
 
 "Oh, I can set up well enough " 
 
 " Then so can I, too ! And I 'm going to 
 stay here with you." 
 
 "Now, Althea, you just let me have my 
 own way about this. I took the place for 
 you before the car reached Fitchburg, and 
 it 's paid for, and you might as well use it. " 
 
 She would have protested further, but he 
 had already left her, and she vainly appealed 
 to him with her entreating eyes when he 
 looked back at her over his shoulder. 
 
 While he was gone she unwrapped the hat 
 that she had borrowed from Friend Ella 
 Shewall, and put it on at the little mirror 
 by the water-cooler. Then she dropped her 
 Shaker shawl over her arm, and sat down 
 again to wait.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 29 
 
 When Lorenzo came back he started at 
 sight of her. " Well, well ! " he said. 
 
 "Do you like it?" she cooed back at 
 him. 
 
 " Well, I should think so ! " 
 
 He began to pick up her bundles, and she 
 stood outside of the seat to give him a chance. 
 " I thought I wouldn't like to have them see 
 me in my Family shawl and my short hair," 
 she explained. 
 
 "I guess they wouldn't noticed much," 
 said Lorenzo. "There a'n't anybody up 
 but the porter. Well, it's all ready." He 
 stopped, and let some of the parcels fall 
 back into the seat, and stood staring at her. 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " Nothing," he answered ; and then he 
 said thickly, "I was just thinking how 
 you would look in a dress that I saw a girl 
 have on at Fitchburg to-day." She felt his 
 eyes on her waist, but she did not mind ; 
 she laughed for pleasure ; she liked to know 
 he thought she had a pretty waist ; he might 
 just as well. He affected to turn it off with 
 a practical remark: "That dress looks a 
 little Shaker yet. Perhaps it won't when 
 you've got the sack on over it. Anyway, 
 we can get something ready-made at Sara- 
 toga. I don't believe you'll ever get any-
 
 3O THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 thing that '11 fit you much better," he gasped, 
 in helpless adoration. 
 
 The girl's face fell a little. " Yee. Sister 
 Miranda made it. She said she was afraid 
 she took almost too much pride in it. I did 
 hate to leave without saying good-bye to 
 her ! " 
 
 "Yee," said the young fellow gravely. 
 
 The black porter from the sleeping-car 
 came in briskly, and after a glance up and 
 down their car to make sure of his passenger 
 he came and took Althea's bags and parcels 
 from Lorenzo's passive hands. "This way, 
 lady," he said. 
 
 She looked at Lorenzo, and he nodded. 
 "I guess he can show you." 
 
 "Good night," she said, following the 
 porter out. 
 
 "Well, good night," answered Lorenzo. 
 He sat down in the seat now empty of her 
 form, and pulled his hat over his eyes.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 31 
 
 ni. 
 
 IT was bright day when she came back to 
 him from the sleeping-car, but he had 
 not yet awakened. She stood looking down 
 at him and smiling, and presently he started 
 awake and stared distractedly up at her 
 before he could pull himself together and 
 say, "Well, well! Did you sleep pretty well?" 
 
 "I rested pretty well," she answered. 
 "How did you?" 
 
 Lorenzo laughed. "I guess I slept pretty 
 well, but I don't believe I rested very much. 
 But I've got the whole day to rest in now." 
 Althea had Friend Ella Shewall's hat and 
 sack both on, and she waited for him to 
 realise the fact before she sat down. " Well, 
 well," he said, in recognition, "that sack is 
 nice." 
 
 "Well?" she urged, as if she felt a dis- 
 appointment in his tone. 
 
 "Well, what do you think?" 
 
 "It don't seem to go exactly with the 
 dress. "
 
 32 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 "Nay," said Lorenzo, with his laugh. 
 "It makes you look like the world-outside 
 one-half, and the other half Shaker." 
 
 "Yee, it does," said Althea forlornly; 
 her chin trembled a little, and her eyes 
 threatened tears. "I guess it's all we're 
 ever going to be, too, Lorenzo : half Shaker 
 and half world-outside," she added bitterly. 
 "I guess I better go back into the sleeping- 
 car and put on my old shawl and bonnet 
 again." 
 
 " No such a thing ! " cried Lorenzo. " I 
 guess we '11 see about that when we get to 
 Saratoga we must be pretty near there 
 now. Set right down here, and I '11 go back 
 for your things." 
 
 "Nay, the coloured man said he would 
 bring them." Althea sank into the seat and 
 got out the handkerchief, broad as a napkin, 
 which she had brought from the Family 
 with her, and wiped the tears from her 
 eyes. Then she bowed her face into it, 
 and her little frame shook with the sobs she 
 smothered. 
 
 "Well! well!" groaned Lorenzo, in an 
 anguish of tenderness. 
 
 Althea suddenly took her handkerchief 
 away and controlled her face. "There! I 
 am ashamed, Lorenzo."
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 33 
 
 " Nay, don't you say that, Althea. You 've 
 got just as much right to cry as anybody, 
 and I want you should cry." 
 
 "Nay, I've got through now," said Althea ; 
 and to prove it she smiled up into his face so 
 radiantly that he laughed, and she laughed 
 with him. 
 
 The porter with her bag and parcels per- 
 haps thought he had arrived at a fortunate 
 moment. He set the bag respectfully at her 
 feet, and kept a smiling face on Lorenzo 
 while he arranged the parcels almost de- 
 coratively on her lap. Then he lingered a 
 moment ; the smile died on his face, and he 
 went mournfully away. They both felt the 
 gloom in his manner, and were sensible of a 
 vague reproach in it. 
 
 "What was it, Lorenzo?" she asked. 
 
 "Well, that was just what I was going 
 to ask you, Althea," said Lorenzo. They 
 wondered over the incident so sadly closed, 
 and their minds were not wholly taken from 
 it until they drew in sight of Saratoga and 
 the train began to slow. They ran along 
 the backs of some simple houses whose yards 
 and gardens were shorn off by the track, and 
 then the vast bulks of the hotels began to 
 show among the foliage that everywhere 
 masses itself over the town. "This must
 
 34 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 be it, " said Lorenzo, and they looked at each 
 other in a sudden fright. "No use being 
 scared about it now," he added, as he re- 
 solutely gathered up Althea's belongings and 
 stood aside to let her get out of the car. 
 The conductor, who took her elbow to help 
 her down from it, let Lorenzo shift for him- 
 self, and the embarrassment they felt was 
 relieved for them both by his dropping some 
 of the parcels, and their having to pick them 
 up from under the feet of the crowd throng- 
 ing into the station. She made him let her 
 keep some of them now, and they passed 
 through the station to the street beyond, 
 where there was a clamour of carriage 
 drivers, and a rank of stately hacks and 
 barouches, and light, wood-coloured surreys 
 and phaetons. The drivers swarmed upon 
 them, but as they stood silent and motion- 
 less under their burdens the drivers dropped 
 off one by one, like dogs that have rushed 
 out at a passer and have failed to make the 
 expected impression upon him. At last they 
 were free, and they walked from the station 
 under the flank of a mighty hotel into a 
 wide street, where they found it one hotel 
 of many, with sweeping piazzas and narrow 
 pillars springing into the air like the steins 
 of tall young trees. The street was freshly
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 35 
 
 watered, and smelled of the dampened dust ; 
 it was set with elms, and under their arches 
 stood vehicles of the same sort and variety 
 as those at the station. Some drove slowly 
 up and down through the sun and shadow ; 
 but their drivers, after a glance at Lorenzo 
 and Althea struggling along under their 
 parcels, intelligently forbore to invite them 
 to a morning drive. 
 
 " I guess we sha'n't want to go to any 
 hotel just yet," said Lorenzo. " We can get 
 breakfast at an eating-house, if we can find 
 one." 
 
 " Yee," Althea timidly assented. 
 
 They had to walk up and down a long 
 while before they found an eating-house. 
 Lorenzo began to be afraid there was nothing 
 but hotels in Saratoga. They trudged along, 
 staring at all the signs, and the shopkeepers, 
 sweeping the dust of their floors across the 
 pavement to the gutters, had to stop for 
 them to get slowly by or else sweep it against 
 them. Althea knew that Lorenzo looked 
 well, but she was smitten with a sense of her 
 own inadequate appearance, and she tried 
 to shrink as much out of sight as possible. 
 
 "Here's one at last," said Lorenzo, stop- 
 ping at a doorway. " Go right in, Althea," 
 he added to her at a certain faltering she
 
 36 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 showed. " It 's all right. It 's just like the 
 one Friend Nason took me to in Fitchburg." 
 
 It seemed very splendid with its mirrors 
 and marble-topped tables and bent-wood 
 chairs, and it overcame Althea with the sur- 
 prise and then the indifference it showed in 
 the shining black waiter who came forward 
 after a moment, as if their custom were not 
 expected or much wanted at that hour in the 
 morning. But Lorenzo was not afraid. He 
 asked if they could have something to eat ; 
 and then the waiter said he guessed so, and 
 he took their parcels and set them against 
 the wall by the table he chose for them. 
 Little groups of flies had knotted themselves 
 into rosettes on the marble where it seemed 
 to have been imperfectly cleansed ; others 
 paraded across it in black files. There were 
 a great many flies in the long, narrow saloon, 
 and the air within was faint and dull, as if it 
 were the air of the evening before, and had 
 been up all night there. A man was wiping 
 a marble counter with a soda fountain at one 
 end of it. At the rear of the room a boy was 
 taking down the chairs which stood on the 
 tables with their legs up. 
 
 Lorenzo asked Althea what she wanted for 
 breakfast, and when she could not think he 
 told the coloured man he guessed they would
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 37 
 
 have beefsteak and coffee and hot biscuit. 
 The coloured man said they had no hot 
 biscuit yet, and he suggested hot cakes. 
 
 "Well, hot cakes, then," said Lorenzo; 
 and he said to Althea that he guessed hot 
 cakes would be full as well anyway. 
 
 Before he brought their breakfast the 
 waiter spread a large napkin over the marble 
 before them, and that forced the flies into a 
 momentary exile. They rose into the air, but 
 they did not go far ; they remained circling 
 round overhead and humming angrily till 
 Lorenzo's order came, and then they settled 
 down upon the table again, and brought 
 with them apparently all the other flies they 
 knew. 
 
 The steak was very juicy and tender, and 
 when the cakes came from the place where an 
 old negro stood frying them on a slab of soap- 
 stone with gas-jets underneath they were 
 very good too. But the coffee was green in 
 colour when they had poured their small jugs 
 of milk into it, and thick with grounds. 
 
 "Not much like our cocoa at the Family," 
 said Lorenzo, for a joke. 
 
 Althea let fall a small " Nay" like a tear, 
 and pushed her cup a little from her without 
 seeming to know it. 
 
 But Lorenzo had seen the act of repul- 
 
 3277S9
 
 38 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 sion, and he called over his shoulder to the 
 waiter, who stood behind him watching 
 Althea, " Haven't you got any cocoa?" 
 
 " Chocolate," said the waiter, impassively. 
 "That do?" 
 
 Lorenzo saw Althea's face brighten, and 
 he said, " Yee yes, I should say," and then 
 Altheaand he langhed together at the joke 
 that puzzled the waiter. They were very gay 
 over their breakfast when he came back with 
 the chocolate, though they were dashed a 
 little at going when the same gloom that 
 they had noticed in the sleeping-car porter 
 fell upon their waiter, after Lorenzo had 
 gathered up all the change he had brought 
 
 " What is it, Lorenzo, seems to come over 
 them so at the last? He was so polite when 
 we sat down, and took our bundles and every- 
 thing, and he didn't even offer to hand them 
 i we left."
 
 THE DAT OF THEIR WEDDING. 39 
 
 IV. 
 
 riltLKY were out on the sidewalk again, and 
 A were pushing aimlessly ahead under 
 their burdens. The air felt fresher outside, 
 and a breeze had began to stir. " I don't 
 know, said Lorenzo. "I guess they're 
 rather changeable, that 'salL Now,Althea, 
 I can see that you're troubled about that 
 dress of yours, and I want you should go 
 into some of these stores with me and see if 
 we can't match your sack better." 
 
 "Do you truly, Lorenzo?" she returned, 
 in a flutter of pleasure. "Well!" 
 
 " Yee, I want to see yon in something a 
 little more seasonable. It's summer, and 
 I 'd like you to have well, a white dress, I 
 believe. " 
 
 " But that wouldn't go any better with the 
 sack than this one." 
 
 " Well, I guess we can find a sack that it 
 wM go with, then," said Lorenzo. " I always 
 heard that they got married in white, anyway. 
 I want you should look like other folks."
 
 4O THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 "Yee," Althea assented, a little faint 
 with her consciousness. 
 
 They passed a good many stores where there 
 were dresses hanging at the doors or in the 
 windows, but Lorenzo showed himself very 
 fastidious ; and though Althea thought some 
 of them would do, he would only say that 
 they could come back if they did not see 
 anything that suited them better. 
 
 "I saw some dresses in a store under that 
 big hotel down yonder a piece, and I want 
 to ask about them first. Didn't you notice 
 them?" 
 
 "Yee, I did. But isn't it rather of a 
 fashionable place ? " 
 
 " That 'a just what I 'm looking for," said 
 Lorenzo, and Althea laughed tremulously. 
 
 When they came down opposite the hotel 
 he boldly led the way across the street, and 
 would not let her falter at the shop door. 
 "Now you come right in, Althea. I know 
 more about the world-outside than you do," 
 he said, in an imperative whisper. 
 
 He was blushing, too, though, when he set 
 their things down on the floor, and a tall, 
 handsome woman came flowingly forward to 
 meet them, between counters gay with hats 
 and bonnets, and clothes-trees with sacks 
 and jackets, and figure-frames with gowns'
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 4! 
 
 that swept the floor with silken trains. The 
 shopwoman looked at them with a blush as 
 bright as their own or brighter, but sub- 
 dued to a softer effect by the film of powder 
 that had got a little into her eyebrows. 
 
 She glanced inquiringly from one to the 
 other, and at Althea's vain gasp she said to 
 Lorenzo, as if he were an old man of the 
 world, and they could understand each other 
 perhaps better, * ' Is there something I could 
 show madam?" 
 
 "Yee, there is," said Lorenzo. "We 
 wanted to get some kind of a dress, if they 
 a'n't all too dear." 
 
 "We have all prices," said the woman, 
 and she touched different gowns as she 
 spoke. " Seventy-five dollars, one fifty, 
 sixty- two and a half, forty-five." 
 
 "You wanted something in cotton goods, 
 didn't you, Althea?" asked Lorenzo, art- 
 fully, so as both to escape from the offer of 
 these garments, which he did not wish to 
 discredit by refusing them, and to bring 
 Althea into the transaction. 
 
 "Yee, I did." And when Lorenzo whis- 
 pered, " Yes don't say yee," she promptly 
 retorted, in undertone, " You keep saying it 
 too." And as if she had plucked up courage 
 from inculpating him, she added to the
 
 42 THE DAY OP THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 shop woman, " I should like something that 
 would go with this sack and hat." 
 
 "Oh, well, then," said the shopwoman, as 
 if she now understood exactly, and in a tone 
 that transferred her allegiance instantly 
 from Lorenzo to Althea, " I have something 
 here very pretty and very cheap," and she 
 took up from a heap of dainty dresses 
 thrown across a table a frock of white 
 muslin, trimmed with ends and knots of 
 cherry ribbon, and fluttered over with lace 
 and niching and ruffling. "This is very 
 cheap," she said, looking at the tag on it, 
 and then drawing it over her arm with her 
 right hand and holding it out to survey it 
 with a glance of her sidelong head, in which 
 there was an eye that studied both the 
 young lovers. "It is quite a dream and 
 imported. It would fit you perfectly, 
 madam. We 're about at the end of our 
 season for summer things now, and you 
 could have this it's marked thirty-five 
 for twenty-five." 
 
 Lorenzo stood agape, but Althea did not 
 seem to know that he was even there. She 
 was rapt in the ecstasy of the pretty dress. 
 "Could would you let me try it on first ?" 
 
 "Why, certainly, madam. Just come 
 with me."
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 43 
 
 Althea followed like one led by a spell. 
 Lorenzo sat down on one of the revolving 
 stools before a show-case filled with ribbons, 
 with Althea's bags and parcels at his feet. 
 It seemed to him that he sat there a long 
 time. While he waited the shopwoman 
 drifted in twice once to fetch away a 
 coquettish cape from one of the clothes- 
 trees, and once to take a gauze hat from a 
 peg. Then nothing happened for a time; 
 and he had begun to wonder what was keep- 
 ing Althea when he lifted his downcast eyes 
 and beheld a vision. 
 
 It was Althea and it was not Althea. It 
 was Althea as she would look, he suddenly 
 thought, in the spirit-life, if spirits could be 
 as beautiful as people on the earth, and have 
 some of the danger in them. He could only 
 deeply murmur, "Well, well!" and stare 
 and stare. 
 
 " Will it do ? " she entreated, with a smile 
 that had a heavenly splendour in it. 
 
 He shut his mouth and swallowed, and 
 then opened it again, but he could not 
 speak. 
 
 "/ think," said the shopwoman, "that 
 madam looks superb in that dress, and she 
 must have the cape with it. Her black 
 sack is very nice, but it 's a little out of
 
 44 THE BAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 style, and it 's rather more of a spring and 
 fall garment. Don't you think the hat is 
 very becoming, too? The ribbon is the 
 same as that on the dress." She touched a 
 knot of it on the hat, and another knot of it 
 on Althea's breast, and Lorenzo felt as if his 
 own heart were under the place. " As the 
 season is passing I can let you have them at 
 the same reduction as the dress. I should 
 have wanted twenty-five for the cape at the 
 beginning of the month, and fifteen for the 
 hat. You can have them both now for 
 twenty-five just fifty in all. And there 
 isn't a stitch needed in any of them." 
 
 " They do seem to fit," said Lorenzo. 
 
 " She could wear them into the street this 
 moment," said the woman. 
 
 Althea said nothing. She let her eyes 
 fall. 
 
 "I guess we shall have to take them," 
 said Lorenzo, and he got his pocket-book 
 out. 
 
 Althea turned suddenly upon him. ' ' Don't 
 you do it unless you feel you 'd ought to, 
 Lorenzo. If it isn't right, I don't want you 
 should do it." 
 
 "Oh, I guess it's all right," said Lorenzo, 
 and the shopwoman confirmed him in the 
 opinion.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 45 
 
 " It would be simply wicked for madam 
 not to have them." 
 
 "Yee, it would I" said Lorenzo more 
 heartily, and he paid the bills over on the 
 counter. 
 
 The woman took them with an absent air, 
 as if she too were bewitched with the beauty 
 she had adorned. " The hat would look ever 
 so much better, of course," she said, "if 
 madam's hair was the natural length. You 
 must come back when it's grown out, and 
 let me show you another." 
 
 It seemed a joke, and they laughed. 
 Lorenzo said boldly, "Yee, we will." And 
 then he said, to help get away, "Well, 
 Althea, I guess we must be going." 
 
 "Oh, then, madam will wear the things 
 at once? Well, that is right. Where did 
 you say I should send the old ones ? " 
 
 The shopwoman addressed Lorenzo, and 
 he blushed he did not know why. ' ' Well, 
 we haven't gone to any hotel yet. Could 
 could we leave them here a little while ? " 
 
 "Certainly, by all means," said the 
 woman. " What name ? " 
 
 "Well," said Lorenzo, and he thought a 
 moment, "I guess you better just put 
 Lorenzo Weaver on." 
 
 "Very well," said the shopwoman, and
 
 46 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 she wrote it down on a piece of paper which 
 she pinned to the sack Friend Ella Shewall 
 had lent Althea. In the midst of all that 
 finery it now looked very common and 
 shabby. Lorenzo said he would come round 
 for the things a little later, and she said, 
 politely, * ' Oh, any time ! " and she followed 
 them to the door. "I wish," she said, "I 
 could have seen madam with her hair long. 
 It's such a pretty shade. Cut off in sick- 
 ness, I suppose." 
 
 **Yee," said Lorenzo; and as they issued 
 upon the sidewalk he was aware that Althea 
 shrank from him, perhaps rather spiritually 
 than corporeally, and yet really. " I know, " 
 he pleaded, "that I oughtn't to have said 
 that, Althea, and I hated to do it as much 
 as you would. But what could I do ? " 
 
 "Nay, we seem to have to tell lies when- 
 ever folks speak to us," said Althea sadly. 
 
 " Well, it a'n't lying exactly, or it a'n't so 
 considered in the world-outside. It's con- 
 sidered just the same as putting folks off. 
 I suppose we 've got to conform in such 
 things." 
 
 "Oh yee," she sighed. 
 
 They walked along in an unhappy silence 
 till Lorenzo said, " Those shoes, Althea, 
 don't seem to go exactly with the rest."
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 47 
 
 He looked down at the little feet which 
 flatly patted the ground in the roomy gear 
 of the Family. 
 
 She looked down at them too, and she 
 assented in a rueful "Nay." 
 
 "I want to see if we can't find you some- 
 thing a little more like," he said; and he 
 laughed to see a slight lift come at once into 
 Althea's gait. 
 
 The young man in the shoe-store made 
 Althea sit down for him to unlace her shoe, 
 and then when he had put on the russet ties, 
 which he said were the thing she wanted, 
 felt her foot all over, to see that the fit was 
 perfect, Lorenzo thought that they ought to 
 have a woman for that, and he could see 
 Althea blushing and shrinking, as if she 
 thought so too ; but he noticed another young 
 woman trying on pair after pair of shoes 
 under the same conditions, and he decided 
 to say nothing about what was so plainly 
 the custom of the world -outside. The shoes 
 were certainly very pretty, and when Althea 
 suffered him to see the points, the very 
 sharp points of them, beyond her skirt, it 
 seemed to him that her feet had gone to 
 nothing in them. " A'n't they a little tight, 
 Althea? No use getting shoes that will 
 hurt you. 5>
 
 40 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 "They don't feel so," said Althea, con- 
 scientiously. 
 
 " You '11 find more room in a sharp-pointed 
 shoe, lady," said the shopman, ignoring 
 Lorenzo in the matter, "than you will in a 
 broad-pointed. Keep them on ? All right. 
 Where shall I send the old ones ? " 
 
 Lorenzo explained, as he had to the 
 modiste, that they had not got a hotel yet, 
 and he asked if he might not call for the 
 shoes later, and he had them marked with 
 his name. "Seems to me you're a good 
 deal taller than you were before, Althea," 
 he said, when they were out on the sidewalk 
 again. 
 
 "Yee; these shoes have got heels, and 
 they seem to be pretty high." She no longer 
 swung forward with the free gait he had 
 always thought so beautiful, but walked 
 mincingly, like the fashionably dressed 
 ladies of the world-outside, whom they now 
 began to meet more and more. He thought 
 Althea was as well dressed as any of them, 
 and he made her come into a gay little shop 
 with him and choose a parasol. "Got to 
 have something to keep the sun off, now your 
 old bonnet's gone." And Althea laughed 
 with him at the thought of it. She chose a 
 white parasol with white silk fringe, and
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 49 
 
 when the shopwoman suggested gloves she 
 chose a pair of white ones, which the woman 
 put on for her. Lorenzo bought her a lace 
 handkerchief, and the woman showed her 
 how to tuck it in at the waist of her dress, 
 where she said handkerchiefs were worn now. 
 
 "Lorenzo," Althea said, with coquettish 
 severity, when they were in the street again, 
 "I'm not going another step with you un- 
 less you get something for yourself now." 
 
 "What do you want I should get?" he 
 asked fondly, with his heart in his throat. 
 
 "You ought to know," she returned, 
 almost pertly. 
 
 "Well," said Lorenzo, "I been thinking 
 I 'd look full better in this hot weather with 
 a straw hat." 
 
 " Yee, you would," said Althea ; and they 
 went into a men's furnishing store, where 
 the shopman advised a straw hat with a very 
 low crown and a very wide brim, and a deep 
 ribbon with vertical stripes of red and blue. 
 Lorenzo took it, and he took a necktie of 
 white silk, which he was advised was the 
 latest style, and he put it on at a little 
 mirror in the back of the store. When he 
 came forward with his new hat on a little 
 slanted, he could see the glow of pride in his 
 looks which came into Althea's face.
 
 50 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 " Like it ? " he asked. But it seemed as 
 if she were too full to speak, and he resumed, 
 carelessly, after he had given the shopman 
 his name, and promised to call for his old 
 hat and tie, " I don't know but we'd full as 
 well go to some hotel now, Althea, and get 
 our things sent there." 
 
 " Well, if you say so, Lorenzo," she 
 answered demurely. 
 
 " I declare, I don't know which one to go 
 to, though," said Lorenzo. " We sha'n't be 
 here often, I presume, and I should like to 
 go to the very best ; but if we asked anybody 
 we shouldn 't know whether they were right 
 or not about it. " 
 
 They stopped and stood looking up and 
 down the street at the different hotels as 
 they showed themselves in the perspective, 
 but they could not make a choice. 
 
 " I wish we had asked that woman at the 
 dresfe-store," said Lorenzo dreamily ; and 
 Althea assented with an anxious, " Yee, she 
 could have told." 
 
 "We might go and ask her now," said 
 Lorenzo, " and yet I kind of hate to." 
 
 The driver of a gay, wood-coloured surrey, 
 who was slowly working his horses up and 
 down with an eye abroad for custom, placed 
 his own interpretation on the wistful air of
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 51 
 
 the young couple standing at the edge of the 
 sidewalk and looking into the street. He 
 pulled up beside them before they were 
 aware. ' ' Carriage ? Take you to the Lake 
 for a dollar ! Drive ? " 
 
 Lorenzo hastily whispered Althea, ; 'We 
 could ask him which is the best, on the way. 
 And and, Althea, we have got to ask some- 
 body about a minister ! " She questioned 
 his meaning with her eyes, and he added, 
 " To marry us." 
 
 She flushed and looked down, and ad- 
 mitted faintly, "Yee." 
 
 " The driver could take us to a good 
 one." 
 
 The driver waited patiently for the end 
 of their conference, though they had not yet 
 answered a word. He suggested, " Take 
 you through the principal streets first, and 
 not charge you anything more." 
 
 " I guess we better, Althea," said Lorenzo; 
 and she let him help her into the surrey 
 with a soft " Well."
 
 52 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING, 
 
 V. 
 
 THE driver looked sharply round at them, 
 and then turned about to his horses 
 again. As he drove by the United States, 
 and the Grand Union, and Congress Hall, 
 and out past the Windsor, he named the 
 different great hotels to them, and Lorenzo 
 caught at the chance to ask him which was 
 the best. *' Well, I don't know as I could 
 hardly make a choice between the four 
 biggest. It depends on what you want for 
 your money." He leaned half round, so as 
 to converse with his passengers at his ease, 
 and lightly controlled his slim sorrels with 
 his left hand, while he stretched his right 
 arm along the back of the seat. "If you 
 want old-family business, I should go to the 
 States ; and if you want all the earth can 
 give in the way of solid comfort, I sh'd go 
 to Congress Hall ; and if you want some- 
 thing very tony, I sh'd go to the Windsor ; 
 but if you 're in for all the life you can get, 
 and all the distinguished visitors, and the
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDIXG. 53 
 
 big politicians, and style, and jewellery, and 
 full band all the while, you want to go to 
 the Grand Union. That's where I'd go if 
 I was in Saratoga for a good time ; but tastes 
 differ, and there a'n't a word to say against 
 the other big hotels, or any house in the 
 place, as far as / 've heard from 'em. Lady 
 object to smokin' ? " The driver suddenly 
 addressed himself to Lorenzo. ' ' Because if 
 she don't I'll finish my cigar." He spoke 
 with the unlighted remnant of a cigar be- 
 tween his teeth. 
 
 Lorenzo looked at Althea, and she said, 
 " Nay, I don't mind." 
 
 A smile ran up into the hard, averted 
 cheek of the driver. He was a slim young 
 fellow, who wore his straw hat at an 
 impudent angle, and had a handsome face 
 full of wicked wisdom ; at the same time 
 there was something like a struggle of con- 
 science in the restraint from impertinence 
 which he put upon himself. " If you '11 just 
 take these lines a second," he said, giving 
 them into Lorenzo's hand ; and then he lighted 
 a match and exhaled his thanks with the first 
 whiff of his cigar. "I can always talk so 
 much better when I 'm smokin', but I don't 
 never like to smoke when my passengers 
 object." Restarted up his horses briskly,
 
 54 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 and pointed out the objects of interest as he 
 passed them. "That's Congress Park. 
 You want to come here in the afternoon for 
 the music Troy band and there 's a balloon 
 ascension there to-day ; that 's something 
 you don't want to miss." He said, more 
 especially for Althea's behoof, "Lady goes 
 up. ' ' He let them look a moment at the pretty 
 park with its stretch of level lawn, and 
 its pavilion and kiosk, its fountain, and its 
 amphitheatrical upland, with a roofage of 
 darker and lighter green propped on tall 
 pine and oak tree stems, and then he jerked 
 his head towards a building on the left. 
 "That's the Saratoga Club. Gamblin' 
 place," he explained to their innocence. 
 " Lots of money changes hands every night. 
 German prince dropped ten thousand there 
 one night, and he didn't take the whole 
 night for it either. It 's a gay place, if it 
 don't look it." In fact, with its discreetly 
 drawn curtains, its careful keeping of grass 
 and flowers, the club-house looked in the 
 bright morning sun like the demure dwelling 
 of some rich man who did not care to Haunt 
 his riches. " Indian encampment," said the 
 driver, with another nod to the left, a little 
 further up the hill. "Get your fortune 
 told there ; shooting-gallery, Punch and
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 55 
 
 Judy, and a little of everything." He 
 nodded at a splendid villa on the right, with 
 an auctioneer's sign upon it. " One of our 
 leadin' gamblers' house. Cost him eighty 
 thousand dollars, and won't bring twenty 
 under the hammer. Got caught in the panic. 
 Took to speculatin'. Been all right if he 'd 
 stuck to the cards," he concluded, as if this 
 were the moral. 
 
 Lorenzo's mind worked with rustic slow- 
 ness through a cloud of worldly ignorance, 
 and the driver had time to point out several 
 other notable residences on the handsome 
 avenue which they were passing through, 
 and told them that it was the way to the 
 horse-races, and that they ought to be in 
 Saratoga for the races, before Lorenzo could 
 get round to ask, "But a'n't it against the 
 law to gamble ? " 
 
 "It's against the gospel too, I guess," 
 said the driver, "but you wouldn't know it 
 in Saratoga. It 's the gamblin' and the 
 racin' that makes the place." He spoke 
 with that pride which people feel in their 
 local evils if they are very great. He swept 
 his passengers with his hardy eye, as if for 
 full enjoyment of any horror he had raised 
 in them, and ended : "And there a'n't but 
 one single minister here that / ever heard of
 
 56 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 that's had the gall to say a word against 
 hoss-racin'. That 's what Saratoga is. " 
 
 His point was lost to them in the thought 
 that came into both their minds at once. 
 Lorenzo whispered it: "Wouldn't that be 
 the one?" 
 
 " I don't know," Althea began. Then she 
 said boldly, " Yee, it would. Ask who it is. " 
 
 It took courage ; but Lorenzo was leaning 
 forward to put the question, when the driver 
 turned round upon them and said, "But if 
 it a'n't one thing it 's another, and I don't 
 suppose Saratoga 's any worse than any 
 other place in the world-outside." 
 
 He pronounced the last words slowly, but 
 with no apparent consciousness that they 
 must have a peculiar effect with Lorenzo 
 and Althea, who mutely shrank together at 
 them. " You ought to let me fetch you 
 here in the afternoon if yon want to see 
 life," the driver went on carelessly. "It's 
 a string of carriages going out one side, and 
 a string coming in on the other. Or it is," 
 he added, more candidly, "in the season. 
 It 's full early yet. " 
 
 It was Althea who commanded herself 
 first. When the danger of discovery seemed 
 past Lorenzo was still silent, but she began 
 to talk and to ask the driver questions,
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR, WEDDING. $7 
 
 which he answered, " Yes, ma'am," and 
 " JVb, ma'am," with a crowing stress on the 
 opening word that seemed personal to her at 
 first, and then only personal to himself. But 
 it was as if he had to be held in check con- 
 tinually from taking liberties, and it tasked 
 all the severity Althea had learned in teaching 
 the girls' school at the Family to manage him. 
 Lorenzo w r as no help to her ; but she held her 
 own, even upon ground so strange to her. 
 
 When they reached the wayside restaurant 
 at the end of the lake, he said, Well, here 
 they were, if they wanted to get a lemonade 
 or anything ; and he added to Lorenzo, 
 " Be a dollar ; I sha'n't charge you anything 
 extra for showin' you round first, as I said." 
 
 "I thought," said Lorenzo to Althea, as 
 they followed passively the lead of the 
 waiter who was showing them to a table 
 on the verandah of the house, " that it meant 
 taking us back, too. Didn't you, Althea?" 
 
 " Yee," Althea whispered, in return. 
 "But I'm glad it didn't. I don't believe 
 I like him very much. We can take another 
 carriage back. " 
 
 "Oh yee." 
 
 They could see far up the lovely lake, from 
 their table, and beyond a stretch of level the 
 noble range of nearer uplands and further
 
 58 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 mountains that frames the Saratoga land- 
 scape on the northward. 
 
 " It 's sightly, Althea," Lorenzo murmured : 
 and she answered in the same undertone, 
 " Yee, it is." 
 
 She spoke vaguely, for she was noticing 
 the people who were sitting about at the 
 other tables, and trying to make out what 
 kind of people they were. There was one 
 group of rather noisy girls, who had very 
 yellow hair and bright cheeks, and who 
 seemed to her like a bevy of harsh, brilliant 
 birds ; their eyes shone glassily when they 
 turned to look at her. A family party of 
 father and mother, and children who had to 
 be constantly checked and controlled were 
 at another table. At another still a pair in 
 later-middle life, who sat at their half-eaten 
 ices, seemed to be studying the rest, and 
 Althea could feel that Lorenzo and she were 
 peculiarly interesting to this pair. 
 
 "They are talking about us," she said to 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 "Well," he returned, after a long draught 
 of his lemonade he had ordered that because 
 the driver had mentioned lemonade "they 
 can't say anything against you, Althea." 
 
 " I wonder if they live in Saratoga," she 
 said. 
 
 "What makes you ask that ? "
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 59 
 
 "I don't know," she answered faintly, 
 and she looked down. " Don't you think 
 they are very nice appearing ? " 
 
 " Yee, I do," said Lorenzo, after a moment. 
 ' ' We 've got to ask somebody about a minis- 
 ter, I presume," he mused aloud, "sooner or 
 later." 
 
 A quick red and white dyed and then 
 blanched Althea's face. ' ' There 's no hurry. 
 I like keeping so, don't you, Lorenzo?" 
 
 " Oh yee. But we can't keep so always." 
 
 "Nay." 
 
 "I do declare, when that fellow spoke up 
 so about the world-outside I didn't know 
 which way to look. Althea, if you think 
 those friends reside here, and it would do to 
 ask them about a minister " 
 
 "Nay," she whispered back in a sudden 
 panic, "you mustn't ! " 
 
 "Well, I won't then." 
 
 They had to pass the elderly couple in 
 going out, and Althea heard the gentle- 
 man say to the lady: "It's quite the nun 
 look." 
 
 " Yes. I don't understand," the lady 
 answered. "Beautiful lovely pure! It's 
 like a child's an angel's. " 
 
 They were both looking up the lake, where 
 the little excursion steamer was coming in 
 sight.
 
 6O THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 VI. 
 
 T ORENZO and Althea found a number 
 J-J of carriages standing outside, but the 
 drivers all said they were engaged. The 
 driver who had brought them was sitting 
 under a tree smoking. He waited for them 
 to ask the others, and then he called out 
 briskly to them, as if he had never seen 
 them before, "Carriage?" 
 
 They looked at each other. "It would be 
 too far to walk back," Lorenzo suggested. 
 
 "It would dust this dress," said Althea, 
 "and I can't seem to walk so well in these 
 shoes." 
 
 Lorenzo turned to the driver, who had 
 now come up to them. "What will you 
 charge to take us back to town ? " 
 
 The driver reflected. "Well, I've got to 
 go back pretty soon anyway. I'll leave it 
 to you." 
 
 " If it was worth a dollar to bring us here," 
 said Lorenzo firmly, "it's worth a dollar to 
 take us back ; and it a'n't worth any more."
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 6 1 
 
 "All right," said the man, and he jumped 
 to his seat. "Where do you want I should 
 leave you ? " he asked, turning round to them 
 when they were seated, while his sorrels 
 started gaily off of themselves. "Leave 
 you at Congress Park, if you say so. It T s 
 central, and you could set down in there, 
 and think what you wanted to do next." 
 
 They felt an impertinence in his sugges- 
 tion, but it expressed their minds, and 
 Lorenzo assented with a stiff "All right." 
 He received some remarks of the driver's 
 so forbiddingly that he left them quite 
 to themselves until they reached the 
 park. 
 
 When they dismounted at the upper gate 
 he took Lorenzo's dollar with a certain 
 hesitation. " I don't know as I 'd ought to 
 charge you so much for just bringin' you 
 back." He looked at them, and then sud- 
 denly turned upon Lorenzo: "Say, a'n't 
 you up from Lebanon ? You 're Shakers, 
 anyway ! " 
 
 "Nay," returned Lorenzo angrily, "we 
 are not." 
 
 "Nays have it," said the young fellow. 
 Without looking round at them, he hollowed 
 out his hands about the match he struck, 
 and lighted a cigar at it while he drove up
 
 62 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 the street at a slow walk, with the Hues held 
 between his knees. 
 
 "0 Lorenzo," cried Althea, "we arel 
 You know we are ! How could you say 
 it?" 
 
 "Well, Althea, we a'rit from Lebanon ! " 
 
 "Oh, you know it wasn't that you denied. 
 We are Shakers. Run after him run after 
 him, and tell him so, no matter what 
 happens \ " 
 
 "Well, well ! But just as you say, 
 Althea. I don r t want to tell a lie any more 
 than you do." 
 
 Lorenzo started and ran up the street 
 after the carriage, calling out, " Say ! Hello ! 
 Stop there a minute ! " The driver stopped 
 and looked round. Lorenzo did not give 
 himself time to falter after he came up. 
 " We are Shakers. Yee, we are ! What is 
 it to you ? " he added, in defiance. 
 
 "Oh, nothing," said the young fellow. 
 ' ' I 'm from down around Lebanon myself. 
 Been at the Family there many a time. 
 Just wanted to see if you 'd lie about it ; 
 always heard a Shaker wouldn't lie." 
 
 "Well, we're not from Lebanon!" 
 Lorenzo retorted, with futile resentment. 
 
 "All right," said the driver. " Look in' 
 for a minister? "
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 63 
 
 The answer seemed to fly out of Lorenzo's 
 mouth of itself : " Yee, we are." 
 
 "I thought so," said the driver. " Well, 
 I know the whitest man in this town, and 
 I can take you to him if you want to get 
 married. Take you and the lady there, and 
 it sha'n't cost you a cent. Say ! " He drew 
 from his waistcoat - pocket the dollar bill 
 which Lorenzo had just given him, and 
 handed it to him. "You just take that, 
 and if he a'n't all I tell you, you keep it. I 
 don't want any man's money without I 
 earn it." 
 
 "All right," said Lorenzo, and he put the 
 bill in his pocket and walked back to Althea 
 in a kind of daze, while the carriage slowly 
 followed. "Althea, he says he knows a 
 good minister." 
 
 "Get right in, lady," said the driver. 
 "If you 're all right, I guess you won't feel 
 but what he is. Well, I '11 tell you what ! 
 He's the one and he's the only one 
 that's got the gall to preach against hoss- 
 racin'." 
 
 He looked as if his words must carry con- 
 viction ; the lovers were helpless before 
 them, and they mounted to the place they 
 had so lately left. The driver turned re- 
 assuringly to Althea again. " Now don't
 
 64 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 you be anxious any. If you don't like his 
 looks you just come right out again, and I'll 
 take you anywheres else you want to go 
 and I know every minister in the place 
 and no extra charge." 
 
 They had not even to go inside for the 
 test the driver proposed. The minister him- 
 self answered Lorenzo's ring ; he pushed 
 open the lattice door that opened outwardly, 
 and scanned them from the threshold with a 
 face that seemed kind and gentle as well as 
 shrewd. Lorenzo and Althea looked at each 
 other without being able to speak. 
 
 The driver spoke for them from his 
 carriage, where he waited to see whether 
 they should find the minister at home. 
 " Good morning, dominie ! I want you to 
 take care of these folks. Friends of mine. " 
 
 The minister looked up at him from under 
 brows that frowned in the strong sunlight, 
 and then laughed in recognition. "I hope 
 they have some better recommendation. 
 Will you walk in ?" he asked of the young 
 couple, and he held the door open for them 
 to enter, and shut it upon them in the cool, 
 dark entry, without further notice of the 
 driver. Then he led them into a dim par- 
 lour, and when he had made a little more 
 light in it by turning the slats of one of the
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 65 
 
 blinds, he asked them if they would not sit 
 down. He said he would be with them in a 
 moment, and he went out, as if to still the 
 clamour of children's voices which made 
 themselves heard from the rear of the house, 
 and then were silent
 
 66 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 VII. 
 
 A LTHEA clutched Lorenzo nervously by 
 -Ll_ the coat-sleeve in the twilight of the 
 parlour, and whispered, "O Lorenzo, do you 
 think we 'd better ? " 
 
 "Yee, I do, Althea. It would be ridic'- 
 lous to back out now. We Ve got to do it." 
 
 " Yee, I presume we have. But not not 
 unless you wish it as much as ever you 
 did ! " 
 
 ' ' I do, full as much. Don't you, Althea ? " 
 
 "Oh yee yee. Will it take very 
 long ? " 
 
 "How should I know, Althea?" 
 
 "That is so. But I hope it won't take 
 long. I can't seem to get my breath." 
 
 "Now, Althea " 
 
 " There ! There he is ! I shall behave, 
 Lorenzo. But don't you don't you try to 
 deny anything if he asks you !" 
 
 "Nay, I won't, Althea." 
 
 The minister came in again, and Althea 
 saw that he had a different coat on and a
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 67 
 
 book in his hand. He sat down and faced 
 them gravely smiling, and pushed softly 
 backward and forward in the rocking-chair 
 he had taken. After waiting for them to 
 speak, he asked, "Is there something I can 
 do for you ? " 
 
 He looked at Lorenzo, who glanced in 
 turn at Althea ; she met his eye with a mute 
 reproach that made him speak. 
 
 " Yee, there is. We we some thought of 
 gettin' married. " 
 
 "Well," said the minister, still smiling, 
 "that is rather serious business, though 
 people seem not to think so always. Do you 
 live in this state ? " 
 
 "Nay or no, I should say. We are from 
 Massachusetts. " 
 
 "Have you friends in Saratoga whom you 
 would like to have present ? " 
 
 "Nay, we are strangers here," answered 
 Lorenzo. "We just came this morning." 
 He looked at Althea for the reward of his 
 honesty, but her eyes were fixed upon the 
 minister. 
 
 " At all in a hurry ? " asked the minister, 
 with a smile. 
 
 " Some of a hurry," Lorenzo asserted, and 
 he drew a long, sighing breath, as if to 
 strengthen himself for further question.
 
 68 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 The minister laughed a little. He was a 
 tall, fair young man, with a light-coloured 
 moustache cut short along his lip. "I'm 
 sorry for the hurry. I don't think it 's the 
 best way to get married. But if you've 
 made up your minds " 
 
 "Yee yes, we have," said Lorenzo 
 boldly. " Haven't we, Althea ?" 
 
 " Yee," Althea answered, more faintly. 
 
 "It a'n't any new thing or any sudden 
 thing with us," said Lorenzo. "We've 
 thought it over, and we've talked it over, 
 and we Ve made up our minds fully. The 
 only hurry that there 's been about it was 
 our comin' here, and that we had to do, to 
 save feelin', as much as anything. We no 
 need to do it." 
 
 Still Althea did not look at Lorenzo, but 
 at a favourable change that passed over the 
 minister's face she gave a little sigh of relief. 
 
 "Well, that's good," said the minister. 
 "I can marry you, of course, and I will, if 
 you wish. But the step you are going to 
 take is the most important step you can take 
 in your whole lives. I like to have people 
 realise that, before I help them to take it, 
 and reflect that it is irrevocable. But if 
 you are attached to each other you will wish 
 it to be so," he suggested, always smiling.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 69 
 
 " Yee," said Lorenzo. 
 
 "That is the theory," continued the 
 minister, and he looked at Althea, as if he 
 felt that he could address a finer and higher 
 intelligence in her. "But the strongest 
 feeling is not always the surest guide. 
 Would you like to go away for a little while, 
 and ask yourselves and each other whether 
 you are quite sure, and then come back ? " 
 He looked from one to the other kindly. 
 Althea glanced at Lorenzo as if shaken. 
 Lorenzo would not meet her eye. 
 
 "We've done that already. We know 
 our minds now as well as we ever shall," he 
 said, with a kind of doggedness. 
 
 "Very well," said the minister. "I 
 thought I ought to suggest it. I must ask 
 whether there is anything in the lives of 
 either of you, or in your circumstances, 
 which should cause you a conscientious 
 scruple against entering the state of mar- 
 riage." 
 
 "NajV they answered together. 
 
 "I needn't ask if you have either of you 
 been married before or are now married ? " 
 
 "Oh nay," they answered, and Lorenzo 
 permitted himself the relief of a laugh at the 
 notion. Althea smiled in sympathy. 
 
 " And your name ? "
 
 7O THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 " Lorenzo Weaver." 
 
 "The lady's?" 
 
 "Althea Brown." 
 
 The minister made a note of the names, 
 and he said, "Is that driver a friend of 
 yours ? " 
 
 "Nay," said Lorenzo, "we don't know 
 him. " 
 
 The minister laughed as if he enjoyed the 
 rogue's pretence of intimacy with them. 
 "Well," he said, "I don't see why we 
 shouldn't proceed. As you have no friends of 
 your own to be present, I will just call my 
 wife to witness the ceremony." 
 
 He went out again, and Althea murmured 
 to Lorenzo in the twilight, "Oh, I hope 
 she '11 come soon ! " 
 
 "I don't believe but what she will," he 
 murmured back. He tried to take her hand 
 to reassure her, but she kept it from him. 
 
 "Because if she don't," she scarcely more 
 than gasped, "I don't believe I can bear it. ; ' 
 
 Lorenzo was silent, as if he did not know 
 what to answer, and they sat mute together 
 in the dim room till the minister came 
 back. 
 
 "My wife will be in directly," he said, 
 seating himself in the rocking-chair; "she 
 has to make some change in her dress " ;
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 71 
 
 and now he spoke to Althea more especially. 
 "With you ladies everything in life seems 
 an occasion for that." 
 
 He smiled, and Althea smiled in mechani- 
 cal response. "Yee," she said. 
 
 The minister looked at her, and after a 
 momentary hesitation he said, "May I ask 
 why you use that form of speech ? I notice 
 that you both use it." 
 
 Althea looked at Lorenzo, and he an- 
 swered bluntly, "We are Shakers." 
 
 "Oh, indeed !" said the minister. "That 
 is very interesting. I have never met any 
 of your people before. You must excuse me 
 if I say that I observed something peculiar 
 in you at the first glance. But I supposed 
 that the Shakers had a dress of their own." 
 
 "Yee, we have in the Family," said 
 Lorenzo ; " but we got these things since we 
 came into the world-outside." 
 
 The minister said "Oh!" and Althea 
 blushed with a consciousness that imparted 
 itself to the whole texture of her pretty 
 dress, and to the cherry ribbons on her 
 breast and hat. "But don't you use the 
 plain language, and say thee and thou, like 
 the Quakers ? " 
 
 "Nay, we say Yee and Nay, 'for more 
 than this cometh of evil.' "
 
 72 V THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 A sort of sectarian self-satisfaction, a sur- 
 vival of conditions he had abandoned, ex- 
 pressed itself in Lorenzo's tone, and he was 
 not apparently sensible of the irony in the 
 minister's " Oh, I see ! " But Althea stirred 
 as if she felt it. 
 
 "We only say so now," she explained, 
 " because we have the habit of it. We have 
 no right to set ourselves above anybody else 
 in the world-outside any more, as far as 
 that goes/' 
 
 * ' Will you excuse me ? " said the minister, 
 with a burst of frankness. "But if it isirt 
 intrusive, I should like very much to know 
 something about your Family life. You are 
 communists, I believe ? " 
 
 " Yee, we have all things common. There 
 is not much to tell j^ou. W"e all work and 
 serve. I taught the school. Lorenzo was 
 in the herb and seed shop ; we put them up 
 for sale." 
 
 "But your religious life your social 
 life?" 
 
 "We believe in the Bible, but we believe 
 that Ann Lee came after Jesus to fulfil his 
 mission. We think that revelation continues 
 to this day, and that we are always in com- 
 munion with the spirit world. The spirits 
 give us our hymns and our music."
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 73 
 
 "I have heard something about it," said 
 the minister, "and about your dancing at 
 your meetings." 
 
 Lorenzo laughed with a little sectarian 
 scorn. "That is about all that some folks 
 in the world-outside think there is to it. 
 That's what they come to see, generally. 
 And it a'n't dancin', to call it rightly. It 's 
 more of a march. " 
 
 " I should like to see it," said the minister. 
 "But your distinctive social peculiarities 
 besides your communism ? " 
 
 Neither of the young people answered at 
 once. At last Althea said, in a low voice, 
 ' ' We live the angelic life. " 
 
 " What do you mean by that? " 
 
 She was silent, and looked at Lorenzo. 
 He answered impatiently, "They don't get 
 married ; they think they are as the angels 
 in heaven." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! Then " 
 
 "That's the reason we left them. If 
 
 there had been any other way " Lorenzo 
 
 hesitated, and Althea took the word. 
 
 ' ' We never should have left the Family as 
 long as we lived. They took us when we 
 were little, and they have taken care of us, 
 and taught us, and done everything for us. 
 They loved us, and we loved them. But "
 
 74 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 She stopped in her turn, and Lorenzo re- 
 sumed, " Well, the whole story is, we got to 
 feelin' foolish about each other." 
 
 "Do you mean," and the minister sup- 
 pressed a smile as he spoke, "that you fell 
 in love ? " 
 
 " Well, I presume you would call it that 
 in the world-outside." 
 
 "I see," said the minister. "And as you 
 could not be married there " 
 
 "Yee." 
 
 They were all silent now till Althea asked 
 in a trembling voice, "Do you think it is 
 wrong for us to get married ? " 
 
 The minister roused himself from the 
 muse he was falling into. "Not the least 
 in the world ! Why should I think so? " 
 
 "We tried to look at it in every light, 
 but sometimes I am afraid we were blinded 
 by our feelings for each other. We didn't 
 wish to be selfish about it, and it did seem 
 as if our " 
 
 "Being in love?" suggested the minister. 
 
 "Yee was a kind of leading, and that 
 we had as good a right to think that it was 
 put into our hearts as any of the other 
 things." 
 
 " That is the way the world-outside re- 
 gards it," said the minister, with a smile
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 75 
 
 that betrayed his relish of the phrase he 
 had adopted. "We even go so far as to 
 say that matches are made in heaven. I 
 must confess that some of them don't seem 
 to bear out the theory." 
 
 " But you think you think that there is 
 nothing wrong in marriage itself, even if 
 folks are not always happy in it?" Althea 
 pursued. 
 
 "Most certainly," said the minister. 
 "It's often very bad; but at its worst it's 
 probably always the best thing under the 
 circumstances." He seemed to speak in 
 earnest, but he kept his smile on Althea, as 
 if her quaint seriousness amused him in its 
 relation to the worldly gaiety of her ap- 
 pearance. The spirit of a nun speaking 
 from the fashions that Althea wore with 
 as much grace as if she were born in 
 them might well have appealed to a less 
 imaginative sympathy. "Why do you 
 ask? Were you taught that it was wrong 
 in itself?" 
 
 " Nay nay," she faltered. 
 
 "They're always talkin' against it," said 
 Lorenzo bitterly. " They say themselves 
 that it 's all right in the earthly order ; and 
 yet they keep bragging up the gospel rela- 
 tion and the angelic life, and tellin' you that
 
 76 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 Christ never got married ; and I think it 's 
 icore on her. I tried to convince her the 
 best I could that Christ wouldn't have gone 
 to weddin's if he hadn't approved of : em, 
 for all he didn't marry." 
 
 "Do you think he did approve of them?" 
 she entreated, tremulously, of the minister. 
 
 "I think he did, indeed." 
 
 "But if Don't his not marrying 
 
 make it appear as if he thought it was of 
 the earthly order ? " 
 
 " There it is again ! " cried Lorenzo. 
 "She can't seem to get past that. I tell 
 her and I don't know how many times 
 I've told her that we can't all expect to 
 lead the angelic life in this world." 
 
 " We can if we choose," she retorted 
 nervously, speaking to Lorenzo, but still 
 intent upon the minister's face. 
 
 "I don't believe," he said, "that we 
 ought to study a literal conformity to the 
 life of Jesus in everything ; that is, we 
 should not make his practice in such a 
 matter an article of faith. I should say 
 that if any one felt strongly appealed to by 
 it, he would do well to follow it ; but if he 
 did not, he would not do well to follow it ; 
 and especially would not do well to enforce 
 it upon others. "
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 77 
 
 "There! Didn't I say so?" demanded 
 Lorenzo of Althea. "Let everybody do- 
 accordin' to his own conscience." 
 
 "As long," said the minister, "as Christ's 
 words do not explicitly condemn mar- 
 riage " 
 
 The voice of Althea broke in upon him r 
 still tremulous but clear, and gaining firm- 
 ness to the close: "And Jesus answering 
 said unto them, The children of this world 
 marry and are given in marriage ; but they 
 which shall be accounted worthy to obtain 
 that world and the resurrection from the 
 dead neither marry nor are given in mar- 
 riage ; neither can they die any more ; for 
 they are equal unto the angels ; and are the 
 children of God, being the children of the 
 resurrection." 
 
 The minister listened with a smile, as if 
 her child-like fanaticism interested him like 
 something of rare and peculiar quality, but 
 he replied, with a certain touch of com- 
 passionate respect, "Is that the passage 
 they ground their doctrine on ? You know 
 those are Luke's words, and Luke had his 
 facts at second-hand. The other gospels do 
 not report the words of Jesus so ; but even 
 if Luke's report were the most accurate, as- 
 it 's certainly the fullest, I should not take
 
 78 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 it literally. I have thought a good deal 
 about that passage," said the minister, "for 
 I have to do a good deal of marrying and 
 giving in marriage, and I read in it a deeper 
 meaning than the face of the words bear. 
 In a certain sense, marriage is both the 
 death and the resurrection. If you will 
 think about it, you will see that it is the 
 very symbol of eternity in human life. All 
 other human relations dissolve and end, but 
 that endures imperishably. The family 
 continually perishes through marriage, 
 which creates it. Children are born to a 
 wedded pair, and there is a family ; they 
 grow up and marry, and the family which 
 they constituted ceases to be, as the family 
 which their children shall constitute will 
 cease to be. But the marriage of the father 
 and mother remains to all eternity. If 
 there is no giving in marriage beyond this 
 life it is not in condemnation of marriage, 
 but in recognition of the fact that it is from 
 everlasting as well as to everlasting, like all 
 things eternal." 
 
 " There, Althea," murmured Lorenzo; but 
 the girl did not speak. 
 
 The minister went on : " The husband and 
 the wife lay down their separate lives, and 
 take up a joint life, which, if they are truly
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 79 
 
 married, shall be theirs for ever. There is 
 no marrying after death, but heaven is 
 imaged in every true marriage on earth ; for 
 heaven is nothing but the joy of self -giving, 
 and marriage is the supreme self-giving. 
 We call the ceremony 'getting married,'" 
 he pursued, expanding with a certain plea- 
 sure in his theme, which was not, perhaps, 
 very relevant to it ; " but the living together, 
 the adjustment of temperaments, the com- 
 promise of opinions, the reconciliation of 
 tastes, is what we should call 'getting 
 married.' I should wish you to remember 
 that marriage is the giving up of self. That 
 is its highest meaning. If it is not that, it 
 is something so low as to be the unworthiest 
 of all human relations. If you do not give 
 up yourselves, if you insist upon what you 
 think your rights against one another, you 
 will be yokemates of perdition, and your 
 marriage will be a hell. I suppose it is the 
 dread of something like this in marriage 
 that has created the celibate sects in all 
 times and in all religions. But marriage is 
 properly the death of the individual, and in 
 its resurrection you will rise not as man and 
 woman, but as one pair, in the unity of 
 immortal love. I declare," he broke off, 
 "I don't know what's keeping my wife.
 
 5O THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 I 'm detaining you an unconscionable time. 
 
 If you'll excuse me, I'll just go " He 
 
 started from his chair, and made a movement 
 towards the door. 
 
 Althea sprang to her feet, and put out her 
 hand. "Nay!" she said nervously, "don't 
 
 call her yet. Lorenzo I Don't you 
 
 believe we'd better take a little time to 
 think and come back? You could let us 
 come back ?" she entreated of the minister. 
 
 " Why, surely ! Again and again, as 
 often as you wish. Go and think it over; 
 and if you still have any misgiving " 
 
 "We haven't any misgivings," said Lo- 
 renzo stoutly. " But if she wants to get her 
 mind clear, I won't be the one to hinder or 
 hurry her." 
 
 "That is the right spirit," said the 
 minister, and he offered the young fellow 
 his haud. "I shall be here till twelve 
 o'clock it's eleven now and after that not 
 till between four and five. I shall be glad 
 to see you back, but if you don't come 
 Good morning ! " He smiled cordially upon 
 them at the lattice door, where he parted 
 from them, and held it open for them to 
 pass out.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 linked in the strong sunshine, and 
 JL walked dizzily down the bit of brick 
 pavement to the gate, and then down the 
 quiet street. 
 
 "I don't know what you'll say to me, 
 Lorenzo," Althea began. 
 
 Without looking round at her he answered, 
 "You done right, Althea." 
 
 "Oh, do you think so?" she quavered. 
 "I did for the best ; I thought we ought to 
 talk it over more, and look into our minds 
 
 and ask ourselves I 'in not sure that I 
 
 see all these things in the light he did.'' 
 
 "Seemed to me he gave us a pretty 
 solemn talk," said Lorenzo "more than 
 he'd any need to. Well, he said as much 
 himself ; I a'n't criticism' him. I thought 
 we had our minds made up. But I could 
 see how he unsettled you by some of the 
 things he said, and if you don't think he 
 made it out so very clear, after all, I want 
 you should feel just right about it every
 
 82 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 way, Althea. We can come back this after- 
 noon." 
 
 "Lorenzo, if you say so, we will go back 
 now this minute !" she cried passionately. 
 "I didn't draw back on my account any 
 more than yours." 
 
 "Nay, we'll wait now awhile or, any 
 rate, till we see it in the right light. But 
 I '11 tell you what, Althea : I think we 've 
 thought enough about it, and more than 
 enough. What we want to do now is to 
 think of something else, and let our marryin' 
 alone awhile. It 's like this, the way I 
 view it : it 's like a sum that you can't do or 
 work out anyhow ; and you can beat your- 
 self against it all day, and you can't do it. 
 But let it alone a spell, and come back after 
 your mind 's rested, and you '11 find it 's 
 done itself." 
 
 "I do believe it's so, Lorenzo," said 
 Althea, with a potential joy in her tone. 
 
 "Yee. And, Althea, I say, let's forget 
 all about it, and go round and enjoy our- 
 selves. It's about as fine a day as I ever 
 saw, and it a'n't likely we shall be back in 
 Saratoga very soon again. There 's no use 
 makin' a poor mouth, and I don't see as 
 there's any reason. You was feelin' well 
 enough before we went in there, and I guess
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 83 
 
 nothing 's really happened to make us down- 
 hearted." 
 
 He leaned over from his loftier height with 
 a smile, and his shoulder touched hers. At 
 the contact her hand glided out upon his 
 arm, as if without her will, and rested there. 
 She did not answer, but in a moment she 
 halted him with a little pull. " Where are 
 we going ? " 
 
 He looked round and laughed. "Well, 
 well ! I declare if I thought. I guess we 
 came down the street because it was easier 
 than to go up." 
 
 "I hope that isn't going to be the way 
 with us through life ! " she said, and she 
 looked round with a laughing face. . 
 
 A young man driving a pair of light sorrels 
 in a wood-coloured surrey drew up in the 
 middle of the road, and held his whip to- 
 wards them. " Carriage ? " he called out. 
 
 "Nay, we don't want to ride," Lorenzo 
 began. 
 
 "Well then," said the driver, and he 
 guided his team closer to them on the corner 
 where they stood, "I guess I shall have to 
 get that dollar from you." He smiled 
 benignly at the bewildered look Lorenzo 
 gave him, and then laughed at his dawning 
 consciousness.
 
 84 THE DAY OF THEFR WEDDING. 
 
 "Well, well! I forgot all about it!" 
 Lorenzo put his hand in his pocket, while 
 Althea drew her hand from his arm ; he took 
 out the note and handed it to the driver. 
 
 " Dominie made it all right for you, then ?" 
 
 Lorenzo tried to withdraw with dignity 
 from the confidential ground taken with him. 
 "I guess so," he said, with dry evasion. 
 
 "Well, I thought so," the driver exulted, 
 "when you come out; and when I see her 
 take your arm, I knowed there wasn't a 
 doubt about it. Say, why don't you get in 
 and let me take you to your hotel? It 
 sha'n't cost you a cent. You wan't to pull 
 up at the Grand Union in style, if that's 
 where .you 're goin'. " 
 
 Althea shrank in dismay from these pre- 
 ternatural intuitions, but it seemed to 
 Lorenzo, though he felt her reluctance, that 
 it would be better to accept the offer, and 
 get rid of the fellow at the hotel door. He 
 was afraid that otherwise he might follow 
 them the whole way, and perhaps give a 
 mortifying publicity to their adventure by 
 trying to talk with them about it from the 
 middle of the street. Besides, he did not 
 know where the Grand Union was, and it 
 seemed settled that they were to go there. 
 
 "I guess we better, Althea," he suggested.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR, WEDDING. 85 
 
 " Well, if you say so, Lorenzo." 
 
 " Well, that 's right ! Get right in, ' said 
 the driver. When they were seated and he 
 turned about to arrange the linen lap-cloth 
 over their knees, he laughed, for Althea's 
 pleasure, and said, " 'Now you're married, 
 you must obey, and mind your husband 
 night and day,' as the song says. Well, 
 that 's the way it works for a while, any- 
 how. Then it 's the husband's turn, and 
 he takes a hack at obeyin'. Well, it 's all in 
 a lifetime, as I tell my wife. Didn't think 
 I was married? How did you suppose I 
 was on to you so quick? Been there my- 
 self. Got the nicest little wife in this town. 
 But I guess I should ha' known what you 
 was after, anyway. Lots of couples come 
 to Saratoga to get married in a hurry. It 's 
 all right ! Did the Dominie ask you some 
 hard questions? He does oftentimes, and 
 if he can't feel just right about it, he won't 
 splice you. I've had to take more than 
 one couple to another shop. But he 's all 
 right, the Dominie is ! Tell him what you 
 was ? " 
 
 "We no need to feel ashamed of any- 
 thiug," said Lorenzo resentfully. 
 
 "Well, that's so. That's what the 
 dominie likes. I could tell you some pretty
 
 86 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 tough stories about the couples I 've had to 
 hunt round for a minister with." 
 
 Lorenzo wished to say something that 
 would put a stop to the fellow's talk, but 
 Althea pressed his arm as a sign for him not 
 to answer, and he forbore. 
 
 The driver seemed to interpret their 
 silence aright. "Well," he said, "it's a 
 pleasure to strike the right sort of couple, 
 and I guess that 's what the dominie thought 
 too. He's all right. Didn't I tell you he 
 was a white man? Well, he is." Though 
 his words ran so freely, the driver suffered 
 from a poverty of ideas which now seemed 
 to make itself apparent even to himself, 
 and he fell silent before they reached the 
 hotel. "Here we are," he said, when he 
 pulled up in front of it at last. 
 
 Lorenzo and Althea sat staring at the 
 great hostelry's facade, with the upward 
 sweep of its portico in front of them, the 
 wide stretch of its verandahs southward, 
 and northward the glitter of the shops and 
 offices under it. Men were going and com- 
 ing up and down the steps of the portico, 
 and they thronged the office within, and 
 stretched in groups along the verandahs, with 
 their feet on the railing ; they were smoking 
 and talking together. Here and there one
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 87 
 
 sat alone, with his cigar sloped upward and 
 his hat-brim sloped downward almost to the 
 point of meeting. 
 
 There were very few women to be seen, 
 and Lorenzo hesitated, with a glance at 
 Althea. The driver tried to encourage him. 
 
 " You want to go right through the inside 
 piazza, and get the rest of the concert; it 
 a'n't over yet. And you can register just as 
 well afterwards ; you won't have any trouble 
 about rooms so early in the season." They 
 dismounted anxiously, and stood looking up 
 into the hotel. "There!" said the driver. 
 "I guess they're goin' in. You just follow 
 them, and you'll be all right." He pointed 
 at a group of ladies who were mounting the 
 steps, and then drove away. The ladies 
 pushed fearlessly into the hotel, and Althea 
 followed with Lorenzo. The place was full 
 of men talking and smoking, like those out- 
 side, and she missed the shelter of the deep 
 Shaker bonnet where she could have hid her 
 face from the glances that seemed to seek it 
 from all sides. She knew that her cropped 
 hair must look strange under her gay hat, 
 and she wanted to ask Lorenzo whether it 
 looked so very strange ; but he was intent 
 upon finding a way between the groups and 
 keeping those ladies in sight. The noise of
 
 88 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 shuffling feet and rippling dresses confused 
 her, and the vastness of the place awed her ; 
 through a doorway on one hand she caught 
 a glimpse of a long room with splendours 
 of upholstery and furnishing, under shining 
 chandeliers and deep mirrors ; and then 
 suddenly they reached a wide open door- 
 way, and at the same moment there burst 
 through upon them a joyous tide of music 
 that seemed to Althea almost to sweep her 
 from her feet, and made her cling closer to 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 On either side of the doorway beautifully 
 dressed women sat listening, or whispered 
 with the haughty -looking men beside them, 
 and before her tall, slim pines shot up from 
 the levels of a wide lawn, and a fountain, 
 set round with broad-leaved plants, gushed 
 into the sunshine that their boughs sifted 
 upon it. On the pathwaj's that intersected 
 each other under the trees nearer and farther 
 pairs of young men and women strayed to- 
 gether to the limits of the high, many- 
 windowed walls that enclosed the landscape. 
 
 "Lorenzo, Lorenzo!" she murmured, as 
 they found places among the company that 
 they seemed to be an accepted part of, "do 
 you believe that we 're awake ? " 
 
 " Yee, I guess we are at last, Althea. Do
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 89 
 
 you like it?" he whispered back, with a 
 lover's pleasure in her pleasure ; he involun- 
 tarily took credit for it as if he had created it. 
 
 "I feel as if I had just come to life," she 
 whispered. " Oh, how could it all have 
 been, and we not know it ! " 
 
 "I guess," he exulted, "there are a good 
 many things in the world-outside that are 
 never heard of in the Family. Do you feel 
 now as if it was wrong ? " 
 
 She saw the same look in his eyes that 
 she knew he saw in hers. " Nay, that's all 
 gone. 1 shall never think so any more." 
 
 Her hand found his at their side, and they 
 eat with their fingers knitted together in the 
 shelter of her drapery that flowed over them. 
 The music that thrilled from the viols and 
 violins, and breathed cool and piercing from 
 the flutes and flageolets, seemed to claim 
 Althea for the earth, and to fill her heart 
 with a bliss of living. It liberated her from 
 the fear that had been lurking in the bottom 
 of her heart. It silenced that dull nether 
 ache of doubt ; it flattered and promised ; it 
 lured her out of the prison of herself, and 
 invited her to be of its own ecstasy.
 
 90 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 DL 
 
 WHEN the piece ended a sweet, high 
 pipe of a voice behind them said, 
 " Won't you have a programme?" and 
 Althea was aware of a little white hand 
 dangling a printed leaf at her shoulder. 
 She looked round and confronted a young 
 girl, with bright, joyful eyes, and a smile of 
 radiant happiness on her lips ; she was very 
 fair, with hair of pale yellow, which loosed 
 itself from the mass in rings and tendrils at 
 her temples and about her neck, and sunnily 
 misted her uncovered head. She wore a 
 light-blue dress, and in her lap lay a hat of 
 yellow straw, with blue cornflowers knotted 
 among its ribbons. "Mamma has one," she 
 explained to Althea's look of question and 
 reluctance, "and we don't need them both" ; 
 and she glanced at the elder lady in black 
 beside her, who nodded a silent assent. 
 
 Althea took the programme provisionally, 
 with some halting thanks, and the girl 
 showed, with a deeply jewelled finger, 
 where the musicians had got in it. She
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 9 1 
 
 included Lorenzo, who was looking round 
 at her, too, in the same hospitable smile. 
 At the end of the next piece Althea offered 
 to restore the programme, but she made her 
 keep it, and she began to talk to her. She 
 asked her if she did not think the music was 
 too lovely for anything, and whether she 
 had heard the music at the other hotels. 
 She contended that it did not sound half so 
 well there, and that it was everything to 
 hear it in such a beautiful place. She asked 
 Althea if she ever saw such a beautiful place, 
 and she said that she did not believe that 
 there was such a beautiful place anywhere. 
 She made her look at the fountain, and while 
 Althea was looking at it she knew the girl 
 was looking at her hat and her dress. 
 
 At the end of the second piece she seemed 
 to have gone much further with Althea in 
 her mind. She leaned forward to ask, 
 " Don't you just love Saratoga ? We Ve been 
 here a week, and I don't believe we can ever 
 get enough of it. You won't mind my talk- 
 ing to you, will you, .without being intro- 
 duced? When you came through the door 
 I said to mamma. ' Well, there's one person 
 that I have simply (jot to know ; and when 
 you came and sat down right in front of us, 
 it did seem too much ! Of course it must
 
 92 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 seem very unceremonious, and I shouldn't 
 do so to every one. Do you mind ? " 
 
 Althea contrived to get in that she did 
 not between this question and the next, but 
 the girl seemed not to care much for her 
 answers. " Have you ever been in Saratoga 
 before? I think everything is so romantic 
 here, and perfect. We didn't expect to stay 
 so long, but " she put on a sudden state as 
 she said so "we've been detained by busi- 
 ness. My husband had to go back to New 
 York on business. He's with Stroud & 
 Malkim there." She looked at Althea as if 
 for an effect of the firm's name upon her, 
 and added, "Curtains, you know. We did 
 intend to go up to Lake George and Lake 
 Champlaiii and to Montreal, but I shouldn't 
 care if we spent every bit of the time in 
 Saratoga. Are you staying in this hotel ? " 
 
 Althea looked at Lorenzo. "Yee es. 
 We are going to as soon as " 
 
 The music began again ; it was the last 
 piece, and when it ended most of the people 
 about them rose and dispersed ; but certain 
 of them waited till they could get. away 
 without being crowded, and her new friend 
 leaned forward to advise Althea to wait till 
 the jam was over. 
 
 Lorenzo said, "I guess you better, Althea,
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 93 
 
 and I might as well go and register. I won't 
 be gone but a little while, and if you '11 stay 
 right here I can easily find you again." 
 
 "Just as you say, Lorenzo," said Althea, 
 but she looked up at him a little wistfully. 
 
 "Oh, we'll chaperon her!" cried their 
 new friend gaily ! and as soon as Lorenzo 
 left his chair she laid her hat upori her own, 
 and slipped into the place next Althea. 
 " Now you needn't tell me if you don't want 
 to, but I just knoiv you 're on your wedding 
 journey ! When you first came in, arm in 
 arm, I told mamma I bet you were." She 
 curled her lip in over her teeth, and ques- 
 tioned Althea with her gay eyes ; then she 
 flashed out: "You are, I know it ! Oh, I 
 ivislt George was here ! George that 's my 
 husband, and he 's the nicest fellow ! Well, 
 I wish you could see him ; he '11 be here to- 
 night, too. I should like our husbands to 
 get acquainted. I think yours is awfully 
 nice-looking ; he ought to have a moustache ; 
 he would look splendid in a moustache. I 
 tell George his moustache is too big for any- 
 thing. There he is ! " She pulled a little 
 watch from her belt, and sprung it open ; 
 on the inside of the case was the head of a 
 young man, which filled it so full that the 
 ends of his moustache extended invisibly into
 
 94 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 space beyond it. "Don't you think he's 
 good-looking ? " 
 
 " Yee, I do," said Althea; but she did not 
 think him so good-looking as Lorenzo. 
 
 The young wife did not wait for an answer; 
 she pressed the pictured face to her lips, 
 snapped the case to, and tucked the watch 
 back in her belt. " It 's taken right on the 
 case ; they do that now, and it 's so much 
 nicer than pasting the photograph. George 
 gave it to me before we were married. Well, 
 he had to hurry up ; we didn't have a very 
 long courtship. We got acquainted on the 
 cars, and he said that the minute he set eyes 
 on me he knew I was the girl he was going 
 to marry. It was a perfect novel, from be- 
 ginning to end ; and I don't care what they 
 say, but I know that the course of true love 
 does run smooth, sometimes. It didn't have 
 a single hitch with us ; but I didn't suppose 
 we should be separated this way, right in 
 the first week of our honeymoon. George 
 says it 's good practice, though ; he 's got to 
 be on the road so much ; and I 've got to be 
 left with mamma, and I might as well begin 
 early ; I 've almost talked her to death about 
 him already." She seemed to be reminded 
 to look round for her mother ; the older 
 woman had made her escape for the moment.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 95 
 
 "Oh, there she is, by the fountain. She 's 
 just as fond of George as I am, and she 'a 
 going to live with us when we get our flat in 
 New York ; we 're going to board awhile 
 first. Is your husband travelling?" She 
 had to explain that her own husband went 
 about over the country getting orders for 
 the house of Stroud and Malkim, and she 
 apparently forgot what she asked, for she 
 followed her question up with another, not 
 waiting for an answer. " Have you been to 
 any of the stores in Saratoga yet? They 
 have lovely things, and so cheap." She 
 looked hard at Althea's costume. 
 
 " I got this dress and hat here this morn- 
 ing," Althea said. 
 
 The other clapped her hands. " I just 
 told mamma you did ! Did you get them at 
 that place under the hotel, a little way up?" 
 
 " I guess so," Althea assented. " I didn't 
 notice exactly." 
 
 " Well, if I ever knew anything like it ! I 
 do believe it 's the very dress George and I 
 looked at yesterday, and I hiow I saw that 
 hat in the window. They 're real imported, 
 the woman said, and they 're dreams, both of 
 them. George would have got them for me 
 if they 'd been my style. They 're killing on 
 you."
 
 96 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 T ORENZO found himself before the great 
 JLJ hotel register, which one of the clerks 
 had wheeled round towards him. When he 
 had fancied inscribing himself and Althea as 
 Lorenzo Weaver and Wife, it had been very 
 simple ; but it suddenly came to him that 
 they were not married, and that he could not 
 truthfully call her his wife. He stood lean- 
 ing over the register, and he was aware of the 
 clerk waiting impatiently. He had said that 
 he wished to register, and he was not doing so. 
 The clerk said severely, and, Lorenzo felt, 
 disdainfully, " Let this gentleman register, 
 please," and then he was aware of some one 
 standing behind him. A large, flourishing- 
 sort-of-looking man, with a shawl on his arm 
 and a bag in his hand, which he put down 
 when Lorenzo moved aside, wrote with the 
 pen which the clerk dipped into the ink and 
 offered him, " J. M. Bayne and Lady," in 
 a rapid authoritative hand, and the clerk 
 said, "Room, Mr. Bayne?" And the man
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 97 
 
 answered, " No ; dinner. We 're going on to 
 Lake George in the afternoon. Like to check 
 these things." And the clerk answered, 
 " Opposite desk, please." And a black call- 
 boy ran up and took the shawl and bag, and 
 the man went away, and left Lorenzo to the 
 register again. The man had solved the 
 problem for him, and he wrote, "Lorenzo 
 Weaver and Lady." If Althea was not his 
 wife, she was certainly, in the parlance of 
 the world-outside, a lady, and this seemed a* 
 safe way out of the trouble. 
 
 "Dinner?" asked the clerk, who came 
 back to him when he looked up from the 
 register. 
 
 "Nay no, I guess I will have a room. 
 But we do want dinner," said Lorenzo. At 
 the word he was sensible of being hungry. 
 
 The clerk wrote a number and an initial 
 against Lorenzo's name, and then he asked, 
 
 " What ? " said Lorenzo. 
 
 " Any trunks or traps to go to your room ? ' r 
 
 " Oh, they haven't come yet. We left our 
 things at the stores till we could make up our 
 minds which hotel ' 
 
 " Ten dollars," said the clerk abruptly. 
 Lorenzo did not know why he said this, but 
 he stood waiting behind the register, and it
 
 98 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 came to Lorenzo that he was asking ten dol- 
 lars of him, and he took out his money and 
 paid it rather tentatively. The clerk took 
 the money, and said, as he laid it in a drawer, 
 " We have to get it in advance where there 's 
 no baggage. Like to go to your room ? " 
 
 "I guess we'll have some dinner first," 
 said Lorenzo. He had decided that he would 
 not try to answer yes or no to anything, for 
 fear he should say yee or nay, and he found 
 it easy to begin always with a guess. 
 
 " Early dinner from one to three," said the 
 clerk. " Go in any time you like." He did 
 not seem so unkind now as at first ; he even 
 smiled a little in looking at Lorenzo, as if now 
 he had fathomed his hesitation in registering, 
 and imagined him to have had the newly 
 married man's embarrassment in declaring 
 his condition so publicly for the first time. 
 He even added, " Dining-room right through 
 the parlour," and then he turned finally 
 away. 
 
 Lorenzo went back to the place where he 
 had left Althea. She was not there, and his 
 heart gave a leap of alarm. He looked all 
 round, whirling about, and searching the 
 long verandahs with eyes which he could 
 not keep from being anxious. 
 
 Far off, almost at the end of the grove, two
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 99 
 
 ladies one in white and one in blue were 
 walking. At the moment he caught sight of 
 them they stopped, and the one in blue began 
 to wave her handkerchief as if she were 
 signalling to him. Then he saw that it was 
 Althea with that young woman who had 
 taken his place beside her ; it was she who 
 was waving to him. She had Althea by the 
 arm, and was leaning forward, as if talking 
 rapidly up into her face. He went out to 
 meet them, advancing shyly ; and as soon as 
 he came within hearing the young woman 
 screamed at him, "Were you scared 1 Did 
 you think some one had run away with her ? " 
 Lorenzo was ashamed to own that he had 
 been frightened. He said, "I guess so"; 
 and that seemed to pass for a joke with the 
 young woman, who bowed herself forward, 
 and then threw herself backward in the fit 
 of laughter that seized her at his words. 
 She walked mincingly, and she hung her 
 disengaged hand at her side with her hand- 
 kerchief always in it, which she now pressed 
 to her eyes, as if to wipe away her tears of 
 laughter. She realised to Lorenzo all that 
 he had ever dreamed of fashionable splendour 
 in the world-outside. Her dress was beauti- 
 ful, and so was her hat, which she wore at 
 a saucy slant on her little golden head.
 
 IOO THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 Alfchea blushed as they approached, but 
 she merely said, " We thought you would 
 see us ; but we were coming back anyway." 
 
 "Oh, this is the best joke!" the young 
 lady cried, beginning to laugh again. " I 
 shall tell George about this the very first 
 thing when I see him. I guess he wouldn't 
 have been scared. He knows I couldn't be 
 induced to run away from him. We did 
 give you a scare, didn't we? Poor Mr. 
 Brown ! " 
 
 Lorenzo stared and said, ' ' My name is 
 Weaver." 
 
 "Why, your wife said it was Brown," 
 the young lady began, in a tone of injury. 
 Then she burst out laughing again. "Oh, 
 I see!" .She turned to Althea. "You 
 forgot you were married, and you told me 
 your maiden name. Oh, that is too good ! 
 When I tell George about this ! But it 
 isn't the least bit surprising. I've been 
 married nearly a whole week, and I believe 
 if I didn't keep saying my married name 
 over to myself all the time, I shouldn't 
 realise yet that I was married. But the 
 only way is to keep saying it ; and I write 
 it too : Mrs. George Cargate, Mrs. George 
 Cargate. If you don't do it, you '11 get into 
 all sorts of scrapes. Well, Mr. Weaver, I
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. IOI 
 
 am going to be awfully good now, and leave 
 you to yourselves ; I can see that you 're 
 just dying to be together." She drew her 
 arm out of Althea's, and then seized her by 
 both wrists. " Oh, you are just too sweet 
 for anything ! That cherry red does become 
 you so, and it's just the same shade here, 
 and here, and here ! " She touched the 
 knot on Althea's hat, the knot on her breast, 
 and the dimple on her cheek ; and then, 
 with a cry of laughter, she broke from them 
 and ran down the path to the hotel. 
 
 Lorenzo and Althea stood abashed in each 
 other's presence. " Well, well ! " he said, 
 at last. 
 
 "I presume we do not understand then- 
 ways yet," said Althea. " She seems to 
 mean well ; but she seems to let herself go 
 a good deal, even for the world-outside." 
 
 "Oh yes," Lorenzo assented; "I pre- 
 sume she don't mean any harm by it. I 'd 
 rather see a person more settled." 
 
 They were walking demurely side by side 
 towards the hotel, and she cast an upward, 
 side wise look at him. " You wouldn't like 
 to have me start off now with a little scream 
 and run after her, yonder ? " 
 
 "Nay," said Lorenzo soberly, "I should 
 not, Althea." Something ascetic showed in
 
 IO2 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 his kind young face ; the potentiality of 
 Shaker eldership passed like a cloud-shadow 
 over it. " I don't like such behaving. Did 
 you tell her did you make her understand 
 that we were not married yet ? " 
 
 "Nay, there was no time for that," 
 answered Althea ; "I had to let her go on 
 talking to me, as if we were." 
 
 " Yee," said Lorenzo. 
 
 " We had to let that driver think so too," 
 she pursued. 
 
 " Oh yee," said Lorenzo, with a sigh ; and 
 he thought how he had let the hotel people 
 think so by the entry he had made ; but he 
 did not tell Althea of that. " I presume," 
 he said, with another deep breath, " that it 
 is not deceiving unless we mean to deceive. 
 It will be all right as soon as we a/re 
 married." 
 
 "We promised not to talk of that yet," 
 said Althea. 
 
 " Yee. Not till you say so. I guess it's 
 about dinner-time now." 
 
 " Oh, well, then, let us go right in. I am 
 hungry. It is a long time since we had 
 breakfast."
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 103 
 
 XL 
 
 AT the door of the dining-room, where 
 Lorenzo gave his hat to a man who 
 was taking hats and putting them on long 
 shelves, they stopped. 
 
 "My short hair will show," Althea 
 whispered, with her hands up to the elastic 
 that held her hat on. " Shall you mind if 
 it makes them look." 
 
 " Oh nay, not if you don't," and he flushed 
 a little, thinking how pretty she was, with 
 her hands up so. 
 
 "I presume they will think it is queer. 
 I don't know exactly what to do, Lorenzo." 
 
 They stood staring into the vast dining- 
 room in a hesitation that grew painful. 
 Rows of small tables stretched away in long 
 perspective, with one wide avenue dividing 
 them, and aisles penetrating their multitude 
 crosswise and lengthwise. The china and 
 glass and silver glittered, the napery shone, 
 and the black waiters in white linen jackets 
 ran to and fro seating and serving the guests,
 
 104 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 who were there already in great number. 
 They kept pressing in around Lorenzo and 
 Althea where they stood. An old grey- 
 headed negro received them with severe 
 state as they entered, and waved his hand 
 to one of his subordinates, who beckoned to 
 the guests and ran down the dining-hall be- 
 fore them to some table where he pulled 
 out chairs for them to be seated. 
 
 " Well, well ! " said Lorenzo, in vague 
 response to Althea's perplexity ; and he 
 turned about without hope of help, but 
 merely to gain time, when his eyes met the 
 gay eyes of that young woman coming for- 
 ward with her silent mother. 
 
 " Oh, are you going to have early dinner, 
 too ? " she called to him, and her voice made 
 Althea turn round. " We are, just to pass 
 away the time ; we have got to do some- 
 thing till George comes. I've just got a 
 despatch from him he telegraphs twice a 
 day and only think ! he won't be here 
 till to-morrow morning. Isn't it a shame ? 
 I don't know what I 'm going to do to live 
 through it. Why don't you go in ? " she 
 asked Althea, as she put her hand through 
 her arm. " We can go in together, I sup- 
 pose ; but there are no seats at our table, 
 and they '11 be sure to put you somewhere
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 1 05 
 
 else, they're so obstinate. What are you 
 waiting for ? " She seemed to note some- 
 thing unusual now in their delay, and she 
 addressed her question to Lorenzo. 
 
 "It's her short hair," he began; and in 
 spite of Althea's " Lorenzo ! " he went on, 
 "It'll show so when she takes her hat off." 
 
 " Well, don't take it off, then ! " cried the 
 young woman. " Half of them are going in 
 with their hats and bonnets on, don't you 
 see ? " 
 
 " Yee-es," said Lorenzo. " But we didn't 
 know " 
 
 "I guess you can do what other people 
 do. Why did you cut it off ? Was it sick- 
 ness ? I had a fever once, when I was little, 
 and I had to have my head shaved. George 
 says he wishes he could have seen me." 
 She was pressing into the room with her 
 hand in Althea's arm, and the stately negro 
 stopped them with a bow that made her 
 drop her hand. " There ! I suppose they '11 
 put you off somewhere by yourselves. I 
 think everything is too provoking to-day ! 
 But I'll see you just as soon as we're 
 through dinner." She went gaily off with 
 her mother, and an airy waiter went down, 
 and in and out of the tables, in a series of 
 dancing positions, till he had led Lorenzo
 
 106 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 and Althea almost the whole length of the 
 hall, and pulled out two chairs for them 
 where they were to sit, and snapped his 
 fingers to another waiter, who came forward 
 to wait upon them. They were red with 
 shame and fear, but under his friendly smile 
 they began to feel more at their ease. They 
 did not know what to ask for, and they let 
 him choose their dinner, which he brought 
 in splendid profusion, and put before them 
 with affectionate hospitality, which, after 
 he had served their dessert, began to suffer 
 a chill eclipse. He went and stood gloomily 
 against the wall with folded arms. 
 
 "I can't think what it is comes over them 
 all, Althea," said Lorenzo. "I believe I 
 shall ask that young woman when we get 
 back to the parlour and have a chance to 
 speak to her." 
 
 He had not to wait so long. The young 
 woman made her way to them from her dis- 
 tant table before they rose from theirs, and 
 took a vacant seat beside Althea. When 
 Lorenzo told how strangely the sleeping- 
 car porter and the restaurant waiter and 
 now this waiter had behaved towards the 
 end, she laughed, and said, "Why, it must 
 be the tip. Did you give them something." 
 
 "What for?"
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. IO7 
 
 "For waiting on you." 
 
 "I thought they were paid for that." 
 
 " Well, they are. But they always expect 
 something extra, George says." 
 
 "Well, well!" said Lorenzo. "How 
 much had I ought to give ? " 
 
 "Well, George says of course, I don't 
 know anything about it myself George says 
 he always gives them five dollars to begin 
 with, and that makes them pleasant ; but if 
 they don't look after him well after that he 
 don't give them anything more. " 
 
 Lorenzo took out his money, which he had 
 all in one roll of bills, and peeled off a five- 
 dollar note, which he held out towards the 
 waiter. The waiter rushed upon it. When 
 he recognised its value he burst into a joyous 
 effervescence of thanks ; he begged them to 
 let him bring them something else, and over- 
 whelmed them with finger-bowls and super- 
 fluous service ; he went down on his knees 
 under the table, to see if they had not 
 di-opped something ; he said that he should 
 be sure to keep those seats for them as long 
 as they stayed ; and he said he would speak 
 to the head-waiter, so that they should not 
 be shown elsewhere. 
 
 "Yes, I guess that was it," said the young 
 woman, when they had got away from him,
 
 IO8 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 and were walking up the wide avenue towards 
 the door together. She had her hand through 
 Althea's arm again, and she talked to Lorenzo 
 over her pretty shoulder, which she drew a 
 little forward as she moved. ' ' I guess you Ve 
 fixed him. And now, Mr. Weaver, I'm 
 going to ask a great favour of you. I want 
 you to lend me your wife a little while. I 
 want her to go shopping with me for an hour 
 or so. I can't think of any other way to put 
 in the time, and if I don't do something I 
 shall simply go stark, staring, raving mad 
 without George here. The stores in Sara- 
 toga are awfully nice, and I Ve seen a lot of 
 things that I want to get, and I know Mrs. 
 Weaver has seen things too that she wants." 
 
 "N-no," Althea began. "I have got 
 everything. I don't want " 
 
 "Now that is all nonsense," said the 
 young woman. "You tell her it is, Mr. 
 Weaver ! I know she 's dying to get some- 
 thing; and you give her a lot of money, 
 won't you? It's your wedding journey, 
 you know, and of course you expect to waste 
 a little, and then economise after you settle 
 down. That 's what George says." 
 
 " Why, Althea, there may be something 
 you need," Lorenzo suggested. 
 
 "Now I ain't going to have it that way ! "
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 1 09 
 
 the young woman pouted. " She 's going to 
 get what she wants, whether she needs it or 
 not. That 's the way I tell George I 'm 
 going to do, and I shall make the money 
 fly, and he had better look out to get plenty 
 of it. It drives mamma almost crazy to hear 
 me talk, and she always takes his part 
 against me." 
 
 "Do you want I should go, Lorenzo?" 
 asked Althea ; but there was a latent light 
 in her eye, that pleaded when her worda 
 would not. 
 
 " Why. yee," said Lorenzo. 
 
 "Is that your pet way of saying yes?'^ 
 asked the young woman. "I think it'& 
 awfully nice to have those pet words just 
 between yourselves. George and I, we say 
 yep, and nop, just for fun, you know, like 
 children. Well, now, give her the money, 
 Mr. Weaver, and we'll be back in the 
 parlour about four o'clock, for I'm going to 
 make an afternoon of it, and we're nob 
 going to have you round. You can go off 
 and sit in the park Congress Park, right 
 over there and listen to the music, or you 
 can go off shopping for yourself if you want 
 to. Mrs. Weaver, I want you to come up 
 to my room while I get my walking-dress 
 on, and I want you to see my trousseau.
 
 HO THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 There's one imported dress present from 
 George that is the dreamiest thing ! By- 
 by ! " She waved her hand over her coquet- 
 tishly shrugged shoulder, and without look- 
 ing at Lorenzo again she pulled Althea 
 away with her.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 XII. 
 
 T ORENZO sat in the park till he was 
 -LJ tired ; then he went about to the 
 different shops where they had left things, 
 and carried them to the hotel himself. He 
 had to wait half an hour in the hotel parlour 
 before Althea and the young woman came 
 in. The young woman said she was dead 
 tired, and she knew they were just dying to 
 be together, and she ran off and left them. 
 
 " Lorenzo," said Althea, "can I go over 
 and sit in that place where you have been 
 staying ? I want to talk with you. Can we 
 talk there ? " 
 
 " Why, yee. It 's a very quiet place now ; 
 the people nearly all went away when the 
 band stopped." 
 
 At the gate of the park Lorenzo stopped 
 and bought admission tickets from the man 
 at the window. 
 
 ' ' Why, do you have to pay to go in ? " 
 demanded Althea. 
 
 " I found out I did when I tried to go in
 
 112 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 without," said Lorenzo. " You have to pay 
 for pretty much everything in the world- 
 outside. " 
 
 "Oh, the world-outside, the world-out- 
 side ! " cried the girl. 
 
 They walked along without speaking till 
 they came to a seat where a recession in the 
 high shaded bank made a special seclusion. 
 They sat down, and Althea took from the 
 belt of her dress a little roll of bank-notes 
 and handed it to Lorenzo. ' ' There is your 
 money, Lorenzo what is left of it. I spent 
 some. I don't know how much. I am not 
 used to counting it." 
 
 Lorenzo put the money in his pocket with- 
 out looking at it. " Nay, we 're neither of 
 us much used to that, Althea. Did you get 
 what you wanted ? " 
 
 " I got what she said I ought to get ; I 
 got a travelling-dress ! I told them to send 
 the things to the hotel." 
 ' "Yee. And I went round to the places 
 where we left our things this morning and 
 got them." 
 
 "I had forgotten about those things," said 
 Althea dreamily. Lorenzo laughed vaguely, 
 and she turned abruptly upon him, with a 
 start from her absence. "Do you know 
 what time it is, Lorenzo ? "
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 113 
 
 " It has been rather of a long day, Althea, 
 and I guess you must have felt it so too. It 
 seems to me, we 've been about so, that it 
 was back in the last century some time when 
 we got out the cars this morning." He 
 pulled his watch out, a large silver one, and 
 he said, with an air of pride, as her eye fell 
 upon it, "Friend Nason thought I better 
 get it, seeing I never had one before, and he 
 went with me to the jeweller's. It 's a Swiss 
 one, and it cost twelve dollars ; he said it 
 was full as good as an American one that 
 would have cost me twenty." She seemed 
 not to notice it, and he added, with a little 
 disappointment, " It 's half-past four." She 
 did not say anything. He closed the case 
 of his watch with a snap, and put it back 
 in his pocket. " I was just thinkin'," he 
 went on, in a smiling muse, " how this light 
 lays along the slope of the upper pasture at 
 the Family. Strikes over the top of the hill 
 and slants along down ; and it gets to be 
 evening there, I guess, as much as an hour 
 before it does in the lower pasture and the 
 garden." He closed his eyes to a fine line. 
 "I can see how it looks as plain as if I was 
 there now. Rufus is comin' up the cow-path 
 to look after the cows and drive 'em down 
 to the barn ; and I can see Elder Thomas 
 H
 
 114 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 there, waitin' with the boys to see 'em milk, 
 and show 'em. It 's just about the time 
 your school lets out, and you 're walkin' over 
 to the Church Family house, and the chil- 
 dren Well, it 's kind of peaceful there ! 
 
 And it 's sightly. It 's full as sightly here, 
 I guess, and now the band's stopped it's 
 peaceful too." The delicious breeze that had 
 been freshening ever since morning was at 
 its sweetest now ; it sang through the tops 
 of the tall, slim oaks of the park, and sighed 
 in the clump of pines where they were sit- 
 ting. Lorenzo paused, as if he hoped for 
 some sympathetic response from Althea, and 
 then he said, " But I like that upper pas- 
 ture. I guess the thrushes are beginning to 
 tune up about now in the wood-lot there. I 
 sha'n't forget how you used to look comin' 
 up by the wall, kind of bendin' forward, and 
 lookin' for wild strawberries, with the little 
 girls in the afternoons, a little later on '' 
 
 She broke in upon him with a sudden harsh- 
 ness : " Lorenzo, what was it made you feel 
 foolish about me in the first place ? " 
 
 Lorenzo kept the smile that was left from 
 his muse, though Althea had spoken so 
 strangely. "I don't know as I can re- 
 member the beginning exactly." 
 
 " Yee, you can, Lorenzo! There must
 
 THE DAY OF THEIll WEDDING. 1 15 
 
 have been a time when you began to feel 
 foolish. Think ! " 
 
 "Why, I told you, Althea. It was one 
 day when I saw you in the march at meetin', 
 and the way you stepped off, and the way 
 you turned at the corners, and the way you 
 carried your head. I always used to watch 
 you ; but that day I seemed to be following 
 you round, as if I was drawed by a rope, 
 and I couldn't get away if I tried. " 
 
 " Was that what made you foolish about 
 me? " 
 
 "It wasn't all. I don't know as I ought 
 to tell you, Althea, but I thought you had 
 beautiful eyes, and there was something 
 about your mouth when you spoke or smiled, 
 and your voice there was something about 
 that, when I picked it out in the singing, 
 that seemed to go through me. I can't ex- 
 press it exactly." 
 
 " Was that all ?" 
 
 " Well, I don't know as you want me to 
 speak of it " 
 
 " Yee, yee ! " she besought him passion- 
 ately. " Tell me everything, speak of every- 
 thing ! " 
 
 "I thought I thought you had a nice 
 figure, Althea ; I told you that last night. 
 Your dress was the same as the rest, but it
 
 Il6 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 didn't look the same on you. It was sight- 
 lier, and graceful. There, I don't feel any- 
 ways sure it 's right to speak of such things, 
 but you wanted I should." 
 
 " Yee, I wanted you should. And now I 
 am going to tell you what made me feel 
 foolish about you. It was because you were 
 so tall and strong-looking, and you had 
 pretty eyelashes, and your hair had such a 
 wave in it when it was long ; and your 
 mouth curved so at the corners, and you had 
 such a deep voice. And you were so hand- 
 some ; and once when we all went berrying, 
 and I hurt my foot, and you lifted me over 
 the wall " 
 
 "I remember," said Lorenzo, joyfully, 
 shyly. 
 
 "I didn't want you to put me down. Do 
 you despise me for it ? " 
 
 "Althea!" 
 
 "You were afraid I despised you for 
 thinking I had a pretty figure." Lorenzo 
 was silent, as if he did not know what to 
 say. 
 
 "We've been over this before, Althea," 
 he spoke, at last. 
 
 She did not heed what he said, apparently. 
 "That young woman, that Mrs. Cargate, 
 has been telling me all about her love affairs,
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDIMG. 117 
 
 as she calls them. She was engaged three 
 times before she got married. She says she 
 has been in love with lots of men. 13 
 
 " Well, well ! " said Lorenzo. 
 
 " And she has got their pictures, and they 
 have got hers. She asked me if I had been 
 engaged before. She says it 's nothing to be 
 engaged. She says that her husband says 
 he first felt foolish about her when he saw 
 her through the car window eating candy 
 and carrying on, as she calls it, with some 
 other girls ; and it was her regular teeth, 
 and red lips while she was eating, that made 
 him feel so." 
 
 "It's kind of sickish," said Lorenzo. 
 
 ' ' He came into the car, and he made an 
 excuse to sit down by her when the other 
 girls left, and she let him have a chance to 
 squeeze her hand he didn't know that she 
 let him " 
 
 "Don't, Althea !" 
 
 "And before she got out they were as 
 good as engaged ; she was dead in love with 
 him, she says, from the first look, and he 
 sent her his picture as soon as he got to New 
 York." 
 
 "Well, well!" 
 
 ' ' Her mother was opposed to her getting 
 engaged again because she thought it was
 
 Il8 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 just another flirtation, and she had got sick 
 of having her engaged so much. She told 
 me just why she fell in love with each one, 
 and what each one said he fell in love with 
 her for." 
 
 "It don't seem exactly right," said Lo- 
 renzo. "She must have made you about 
 sick with her talk." 
 
 "Her mother didn't like him when he 
 first called they promised to correspond 
 before she got off the cars, and she told him 
 where she lived but she took to her bed, 
 and her mother had to consent. Now her 
 mother likes him as much as she does. 
 They 're the greate friends, and when he 
 found that he would have to go back to New 
 York from here he kept it a secret from her, 
 and telegraphed for her mother to come up 
 and stay with her, and she never knew any- 
 thing about it till her mother came into the 
 room. " 
 
 "Well, it seems to have come all right, 
 then," said Lorenzo, with a vague optimism ; 
 but he moved uneasily under Althea's eye, 
 and his smile faded. 
 
 "From all that I can make out," she said, 
 "they fell in love with each other for the 
 same things, or just about the same, as 
 we got foolish about each other for. He
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. IIQ 
 
 thought she was handsome, and she thought 
 he was handsome. Lorenzo, they fell in love 
 with each other's looks \ " 
 
 Lorenzo waited a moment before he said, 
 with a certain reproach, "I thought you was 
 smart too, Althea smarter than I was." 
 
 " And I knew you were good, Lorenzo. 
 But it didn't begin with that." 
 
 "Nay, it didn't begin with that," he 
 owned. 
 
 "If it had begun with that," she went on, 
 "I shouldn't ever have doubted about it for 
 a second. It 's the way it began that makes 
 me afraid of it." 
 
 " I never saw it in that light before," said 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 She drew a little away from him, and 
 looked at him askance. " How do I know 
 but I was trying to make you feel, all the 
 time in the march, that I was graceful? 
 How do I know but what I just thought my 
 foot was hurt, so that you would have to 
 carry me " 
 
 "Now, look here, Althea, that young 
 woman has made you blame yourself for 
 nothin'. You're perfectly notionate about 
 it " 
 
 She caught his hand where it lay next 
 her on the seat, and pressed it nervously,
 
 120 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 piteously. " Try to think back far back, 
 Lorenzo and see if there was not something 
 different in your mind that made you foolish 
 about me before you noticed that I was 
 sightly. See if you didn't think I was bright 
 first. I shouldn't want them to say in the 
 Family that we were taken with each other's 
 looks. " 
 
 Lorenzo thought, as he was bid. " Nay, I 
 guess it was the looks first, as far as 7 went," 
 he said faithfully. "It was afterwards that 
 I thought you was smart." 
 
 "Oh !" she said, and a little gush of tears 
 came into her eyes. 
 
 They were both silent for a time, and then 
 Lorenzo said, " I know it seems kind of 
 demeanin', but I don't knoAV as you can say 
 it 's wrong exactly. I presume it 's the way 
 that folks have begun to feel foolish ever 
 since there was any folks. And I presume 
 the looks must have been given to us for 
 some good purpose ? " He suggested rather 
 than asserted this, with his eyes fastened 
 tenderly upon Althea's face, which, blurred 
 with tears as it was, was still so pretty. 
 She wiped her eyes with the handkerchief 
 he had bought her that morning, and then 
 tucked it, with a little vivid, graceful motion, 
 into the waist of her dress.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 121 
 
 When he began again it was with more 
 confidence, more authority of tone. "The 
 way I think we had ought to look at it is 
 this : It 's the body that contains the soul, 
 and the body is outside of the soul, and it 
 comes first, and it has a right to, as long as 
 it's outside the soul. It can't help it, and 
 the soul can't help it. But I believe we 
 shall find each other in the soul more and 
 more." 
 
 " Do you really think that, Lorenzo ? " 
 
 " Yee, I do, and I wouldn't say it just to 
 comfort you." 
 
 "I know you wouldn't, Lorenzo. You 
 are true truer than I am." 
 
 She rose, and they walked silently out of 
 the park together. Beyond the gate he 
 asked her, "Where would you like to go 
 now, Althea?" 
 
 "To the minister's," she said. 
 
 Lorenzo arrested her in a panic. ' ' Not 
 unless you want to go there of your own 
 accord, Althea." 
 
 "I do." 
 
 "Do you feel as if I had coaxed you to do 
 it hurried you any ? " 
 
 " Nay, you always do what you say you 
 will do. If I only felt as sure of myself as I 
 do of you ! "
 
 122 THE DAT OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 " Oh, / do ! " said Lorenzo. " I presume," 
 he continued, as if from the necessity of 
 finding a reason for her conclusion, "you'll 
 feel full better about le.ttin' that driver and 
 the young woman think we 're married if we 
 really are married. " 
 
 "Nay, what difference does that make 
 now?" she demanded scornfully. 
 
 "I don't know as it does a great deal," 
 he assented. 
 
 "If we're like the world-outside in one 
 thing, we must be like it in all," she said. 
 
 Lorenzo did not answer.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 123 
 
 XIII. 
 
 IT was the minister himself again who 
 opened the lattice door to them. " Oh, 
 here you are back ! I am glad to see you. 
 Well, have you made up your minds ? " He 
 spoke while they were getting through the 
 entry into his dim parlour, with a tone of 
 pleasantry. 
 
 Althea took the word. "Yee, we have 
 made up our minds. " 
 
 "And you really intend to get married 
 this time ? " He looked at Lorenzo. 
 
 "Yee, we do." 
 
 "I suppose you've thought it over thor- 
 oiighly. I wish all the young people who 
 come to me would do so. It would save a 
 great deal of hopeless and useless thinking 
 afterwards. If you'll sit down I will call 
 my wife, and " 
 
 He left them alone a moment, and Loren- 
 zo whispered, "Althea, if you want to ask 
 him again how he looks at that point in 
 Luke "
 
 124 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 "Nay, we can see it as clearly as he can. 
 We have got all the light there is." 
 
 " Yee, I presume that is so." 
 
 They had each other by the hand, and she 
 pressed his hand convulsively, "Don't say 
 anything more, Lorenzo." 
 
 "Just as you say, Althea." 
 
 After a little delay the minister returned, 
 bringing his wife with him a short, stout 
 little brunette, who had the effect of having 
 hurriedly encased herself for the occasion in 
 a black silk dress she wore. She glanced at 
 Althea with a certain dislike or defiance in 
 her look, as one does at a stranger whom 
 one has heard prejudicial things of ; and if 
 the minister had told her of Althea's mis- 
 givings it might well have incensed a wife 
 and mother. 
 
 He introduced them to her as Miss Brown 
 and Mr. Weaver, and he said, "Well, now, 
 if you will take your places," and when they 
 stood before him he began the ceremony. 
 
 Lorenzo, when he was asked if he would 
 take Althea to be his wedded wife, help- 
 lessly answered, "Yee," and Althea did the 
 same in her turn. 
 
 The light of a smile came over the minis- 
 ter's face at their answers, and when he had 
 pronounced them man and wife and blessed
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 125 
 
 them, he said, laughing, "I suppose that 
 this comes as near being a Shaker wedding 
 as any could. Did you make the responses 
 purposely in Shaker parlance ? " 
 
 "Did we say yee?" Lorenzo asked of 
 Althea. 
 
 " Yee, we did," she said, and he smiled, 
 but she did not. " I heard you say it, and 
 I guess 7 did." 
 
 They both sat down again, and the minis- 
 ter's wife was about to sit down too, seeing 
 that they were not going away, when there 
 came loud cries of grief and rage from the 
 back of the house, and she ran out to still 
 them. The minister went to a writing-desk 
 and filled up a certificate of marriage, which 
 he handed to Althea, and then he sat down 
 too. 
 
 "I don't know why we always make the 
 ladies the custodians of these things, but we 
 do. I think myself it's often quite as im- 
 portant to the husband to know that he is 
 married." 
 
 "And are we married now? " she faltered. 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 " Quite. It wasn't so very formidable, 
 was it ? " 
 
 "But but " She stopped, as if in a 
 
 fright. "But it isn't over? I thought I
 
 126 THE DAY OI THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 thought there was something more ; and 
 
 that that Do you mean that now we 
 
 couldn't change ? " 
 
 "Why, surely," said the minister, "you 
 understood what you were doing? Didn't 
 you suppose that when I asked you if you 
 would take this man for your husband, I 
 was asking you if you would marry him ? " 
 
 "Yee, I knew that. But I didn't think 
 that was all there was to it." 
 
 "I presume," .Lorenzo began, "that it's 
 because you ain't used to it, Althea." 
 
 The minister broke in with a laugh. " It 'B 
 to be hoped that you won't get into the habit 
 of it, Mrs. Weaver ; some people do. But 
 you're quite right about it, in one sense. 
 This isn't all there is of marriage, and it 
 isn't all over by any means. It's just be- 
 gun." He sat rocking and smiling at them, 
 and they remained rigidly upright in their 
 chairs. 
 
 " I presume," said Lorenzo, " that there's 
 some charge. How much will it be ? " 
 
 The minister seemed amused at the blunt- 
 ness of the demand. " There 's no fee." He 
 had apparently a little difficulty in adding, 
 "It is something we always leave to the 
 bridegroom." 
 
 Lorenzo took out his roll of bank-notes.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 127 
 
 He peeled one off the roll, and handed it to 
 the minister. " That be enough ? " 
 
 The minister took the ten-dollar note and 
 looked at it. "I think it would be alto- 
 gether too much unless you are richer than 
 I imagine." 
 
 "Well," said Lorenzo proudly, " I started 
 with a hundred dollars last night." 
 
 " And is that all your worldly wealth?" 
 
 " I Ve got a lot in Fitchburg that 's worth 
 four hundred more. " 
 
 " Is that so ? " asked the minister. " You 
 are a capitalist. Still, I think that if you 
 happen to have a one-dollar bill in that roll 
 I should prefer it. " 
 
 ' ' I guess I got one, " said Lorenzo with the 
 same phlegm ; and he looked among the notes 
 till he found a dollar bill, which he gave to 
 the minister. 
 
 " Ah, thank you," said the minister ; and 
 he added, "I don't suppose you had quite 
 the training of a financier a moneyed man 
 in the Family ? " 
 
 Lorenzo laughed. "I never had a cent 
 in my hands till a week ago, when I left the 
 Family. The Trustees do all the buyin'." 
 
 "Is it possible, is it possible?" cried the 
 minister. " You are of the resurrection, 
 indeed ! You begin to convert me ! Do
 
 128 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 you think they would admit me to the 
 Family ? " 
 
 "Oh yee," said Lorenzo gravely. "You 
 would have to separate, and give up your 
 children." 
 
 " Ah, that isn't so simple. At any rate it 
 requires reflection. But to be in a condition 
 where the curse of money is taken away ! 
 What is the name of your family : Eden ? 
 Paradise ? Golden Age ? " 
 
 " Nay," returned Lorenzo with serious- 
 ness ; " we came from Harshire." 
 
 There seemed to be nothing more to say or 
 do, but Lorenzo would probably not have got 
 away of his own motion. It was Althea who 
 had to say to the minister, "Well, good 
 afternoon " ; and when he offered his hand in 
 response, it was she who had first to take it. 
 She did it very stiffly, but Lorenzo gave it a 
 large, loose grasp, and held it a moment, as 
 if trying to think of something grateful, or 
 at least fitting, before he said, " Well, good 
 afternoon," in his turn.
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 129 
 
 XIV. 
 
 ON their way back to the hotel they were 
 silent till Lorenzo took out the money 
 he had put loosely into his pocket, and folded 
 it more neatly. He turned the notes over, 
 and then felt in his other pockets, as if he 
 thought he might have misplaced some of 
 them. Althea did not seem to notice what 
 he was doing. She walked rapidly a little 
 ahead of him. 
 
 " Althea," he said gently, and a little 
 timidly, ' ' I don't know as we better stay in 
 Saratoga well, not a great deal longer." 
 She looked round. "I I the money seems 
 to be nearly all gone. I guess we ha'n't got 
 much more than enough to pay for our tickets 
 back to Fitchburg." 
 
 She appeared not to understand at first. 
 Then she said passionately, " Let us go at 
 once, then ! I shall be glad to go. Don't 
 let 's stay a minute longer. It 's dreadful to 
 me here ! " 
 
 "Just as you say, Althea," he returned 
 i
 
 I3O THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 submissively. " I presume we might full as 
 well stay till after supper. We 've paid for 
 it, and the cars don't " 
 
 " Go and see if there isn't an earlier train 
 if there isn't one that starts right off. I want 
 to start now." 
 
 " Why, Althea " 
 
 " Don't try to speak to me, Lorenzo? " 
 
 " Nay, I won't, then. But I got to take 
 you to the hotel, and get them to show you 
 where the room is." 
 
 "WdM" 
 
 " And then I '11 go round to the depot and 
 find out about the cars." 
 
 As they mounted the steps of the hotel 
 porch a girlish figure in light blue came fly- 
 ing towards them from the end of the long 
 verandah. It was young Mrs. Cargate ; she 
 waved a telegram in the air. " Oh, he 's 
 coming ! " she called to them. " He 's com- 
 ing to-night ! He '11 be here on the seven 
 o'clock train ! Oh, it seems as if I could fly, 
 I 'm so glad ! 1 could just hug everybody ! 
 
 I must hug somebody ; 1 must kiss " She 
 
 ran upon Althea, and flung her arms round 
 her, and put up her pouted lips. 
 
 Althea pulled away, and, with her head 
 thrown back, "Nay," she said icily, "we 
 don't kiss."
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 131 
 
 The young woman released her. " You 
 don't kiss ? Well, if that isn't the best joke 
 yet! When I tell George about this ! Why, 
 what do you and Mr. Wea " 
 
 "It's against our religion," said Lorenzo 
 sternly, and his face was the face of an ascetic 
 as he spoke. 
 
 The young woman gasped, and retreated 
 from them, staring at them as she paced 
 slowly backward. She turned and ran, with 
 a cry of laughter, towards the black figure 
 of her silent mother at the end of the 
 verandah. 
 
 At the door of their room Lorenzo left 
 Althea. ' ' I will go and see about the cars 
 now. You get the things all ready, so that 
 we needn't lose any time if the cars start 
 anyways soon." He spoke with an austerity 
 which was like something left of the tone 
 he had used in rebuking that young woman. 
 It was gone when he came back, and called 
 gently, on the outside of the door, "Althea ! " 
 
 " Yee, Lorenzo," her voice answered, 
 " come in ! " 
 
 He opened the door, and stood staring at 
 her from the threshold. She sat dressed in 
 her garb of Shakeress the plain, straight 
 gown of drab, the drab shawl crossed upon 
 her breast, the close collar that came up to
 
 132 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 her chin ; her face was hidden in the depths 
 of the Shaker bonnet. 
 
 " Well, well ! " he murmured huskily. 
 
 " Sit down, Lorenzo," she said. 
 
 " There ain't much time, Althea. The cars 
 
 start in about half an hour, and " He 
 
 glanced about the room, where, on chairs and 
 sofas, were strewn the finery that Althea had 
 worn during the day ; the packages of her 
 afternoon purchases had been torn open, and 
 their contents scattered about on the floor. 
 His eye caught upon a fashionable gown 
 of grey stuff. " That your travelling-dress, 
 Althea? " he asked feebly. 
 
 " I have got on my travelling-dress, Lo- 
 renzo. I am going back to the Family." 
 
 " Yee," he vaguely assented. 
 
 " I tried to put that dress on," she con- 
 tinued ; " I couldn't." She paused, as if foi 
 him to say something, but he did not say 
 anything. "I have thought it all out at 
 last, Lorenzo. I don't blame the earthly 
 order ; it 's the best thing there is in the 
 world-outside. But we have known the 
 heavenly order, and if even if we were to 
 be very happy together " 
 
 She stopped, and he said, " Yee." 
 
 " Or, that isn't it, either. They may be all 
 wrong in what they taught us in the Family. "
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 133 
 
 Lorenzo cleared his throat. " It did seem 
 so for a spell. " 
 
 "But whether it was right or whether it 
 was wrong, whether it was true or whether 
 it was false, it 's too strong for me now, and 
 it would be too strong as long as I lived. I 
 have got to go back." 
 
 " Have you thought what they will say ? " 
 
 * ' Haven't I thought what they would say 
 every minute since I stole out of the Family 
 house like a thief and ran away ? But I 
 don't care what they will say. They will 
 take me back, I know that, and that is all I 
 care for." 
 
 "Yee." 
 
 "I want you should let me go as far as 
 Fitchburg with you, and then I can easily 
 get to Harshire. " 
 
 He stared at her. " Althea, do you think 
 I am going to let you go back alone ? " he 
 asked solemnly. "I am going back to 
 Harshire with you." 
 
 ' ' Nay, Lorenzo, I have thought that out too. 
 I blame myself for getting married to you." 
 
 " I wanted to full as much as you did, 
 Althea. It was my fault too. " 
 
 "I thought I thought if it was over I 
 should feel differently, and see it as folks do 
 in the world-outside."
 
 134 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 "Yee, I knew that, Althea. I wouldn't 
 have let you if I hadn't understood it so. I 
 could see how your mind was workin'." 
 
 " But I can't see it so, Lorenzo ! The 
 more I look at it the worse it seems for us ! " 
 
 "It's strange," he mused aloud, "that 
 we can't look at it in their light. Is it a sin 
 for all the world ? " 
 
 " It isn't a sin for the world, for the world 
 hasn't the same light as ours. But we should 
 be shutting our eyes to the light ! " 
 
 " Yee," he assented sadly. 
 
 "But, Lorenzo," she entreated passion- 
 ately, "if you say for me to stay in the 
 world-outside with you and be your wife, I 
 will do it ! Do you say so ? Do you say 
 so ? " She came towards him with her hands 
 clasped, and her face wild in the depths of 
 her Shaker bonnet, where her tears shone 
 dimly. " I 'm nothing ! What do I care 
 for myself ? It 's only the truth I care for, 
 and the light ! But if you say so, Lorenzo, 
 the light of the world shall be my light, the 
 darkness shall be my light ! " 
 
 There was a moment before he answered, 
 " Nay, I don't say so, Althea ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " She fell back in her chair and 
 began to sob. 
 
 "Do you think," he asked, "that I could
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 135 
 
 be anyways comfortable knowin' that you 
 wanted to live the angelic life, and I was 
 draggin' you down to the earthly ? " 
 
 "The angelic life wouldn't be anything 
 without you, Lorenzo," she said tenderly, 
 but with a confusion of purpose which was 
 not, perhaps, apparent even to herself. 
 
 "Nor the earthly order without you," he 
 answered solemnly. He added, with that 
 mixture of commonplace which was an 
 element in his nature, "I presume, if I 
 wanted to stay in the world -outside, I 
 could get a divorce easy enough ; but if 
 I can't have you, I don't want to stay. If 
 you can't feel that it 's right for you to live 
 in the earthly order, I know it can't be 
 right for me either. We can do like so 
 many of them have done : we can go back 
 to the Family, and live there separate. It 
 will be a cross, but it won't be any more of 
 a cross for us than it is for the others that 
 have separated ; and maybe maybe we 
 ought to bear a cross." 
 
 " Don't try to make me cry, Lorenzo ! " 
 
 He looked round the room again, dis- 
 ordered with the pretty things she had 
 flung about. " I declare," he said dreamily, 
 " that hat 's got to look like you." 
 
 "Lorenzo ! "
 
 136 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 
 
 "If you've got on everything you need, 
 Althea, we'll leave these things here. We 
 sha'n't want 'em any more where we 're 
 goin'." He stopped, and they stood looking 
 at each other. " Althea, we have got to tell 
 them everything we 've done when we get 
 back." 
 
 "Yee." 
 
 "Do you believe, Althea," he said, in a 
 voice that came like a thick whisper from 
 his throat, " that they would think any the 
 worse of you if I was to kiss you ? " 
 
 "I don't know, Lorenzo." 
 
 " It would be for good-bye, just once ; 
 and it would be my fault, and not yours." 
 
 " I don't want you should bear the blame. 
 If you were to do it, it would be because I 
 let you." 
 
 He caught her to his breast ; she laid her 
 arms tenderly about his neck; their heads 
 were both hidden in her Shaker bonnet. 
 
 "Now come," he said. 
 
 They walked along towards the statin 
 rapidly, Lorenzo some paces ahead of Althea, 
 and they looked as if they did not belong 
 together. A young fellow in a light wood- 
 coloured surrey, with a pair of slender sorrels, 
 drew up to the sidewalk, and called to
 
 THE DAY OF THEIR WEDDING. 137 
 
 Lorenzo, " Carriage ! Want a ca " His 
 
 eye strayed from Lorenzo to the figure of 
 Althea in her Shaker dress. He pushed up 
 his hat, and the cigar which he was smoking 
 dropped from his parting lips. They passed 
 him without looking up, but his head was 
 drawn round after them, as if by a magnetic 
 attraction, and he remained staring at them 
 over his shoulder till they were lost to sight 
 at the corner turning to the station.
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING.
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 I. 
 
 THEY drove along in the old chaise, 
 with the top down, under the bright 
 forenoon sun. The June warmth had a 
 hint of summer heat in it, but a light 
 wind blew cool in their faces out of the 
 north-west. It had rained over night, and 
 the earth seemed washed as clean as the 
 sky. Where the woods were cut away 
 from the smoothly packed road, the laurel 
 was coming in bloom ; where the trees 
 closed upon it the pine tufts purred, and 
 the birch leaves sang in the breeze, so 
 near that she had to put up her hand to 
 keep a bough from switching her in the face 
 now and then ; the horse made snatches at 
 the foliage, and from time to time champed 
 thoughtfully on his bit, as if he fancied he 
 might have caught a leaf in his mouth.
 
 142 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 The young man held the lax rein in one 
 hand, while he held closely in the other 
 the hand of the young girl beside him. She 
 seemed more conscious of what the horse 
 was doing than he, and she returned his long 
 gaze with eyes that made little flights of 
 anxiety away from his, to the right and the 
 left, and then settled back to the joy of 
 dwelling on his face. It was the thin, 
 aquiline face of New England ; the cheek- 
 bones were high, and touched with a colour 
 that kept itself pure, though his long hands 
 were a country brown ; his eves were blue, 
 and his hair pale yellow. His looks had no 
 aquiline fierceness from his profile, but only 
 a gentle intensity, unless it might better be 
 called a mild rapture. 
 
 The girl beside him sat pulled away into 
 the corner of the chaise, and yet drawn 
 towards him in a tender droop. Her face 
 was somewhat narrow, and that made the 
 corners of her pretty mouth show far into 
 her cheeks. Her nose was tilted a little 
 above it, but it was straight and fine from 
 the tip upward ; her eyes were set rather 
 near together, and her forehead had the 
 hair drawn low on it, and close to her 
 mobile brows. A wide-fronted scoop-bonnet 
 flared round her little head, with ribbons
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 143 
 
 that fell to the waist of her very high-waisted 
 green silk dress, made in the fashion of 
 seventy years ago, with a skirt ending in 
 closely gathered ruffles a foot deep. The 
 young man wore a blue coat with brass 
 buttons, tight sleeves, and a high quilted 
 collar ; he had passed several times round 
 his throat a cambric cravat ; and his panta- 
 loons, closely fitted to his legs, met his 
 gaiters at the ankles. They were country 
 people, and their costumes, which their 
 figures gave distinction, were not those of 
 the very moment in London and Paris.
 
 144 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 n. 
 
 HE was Roger Burton, and he had taught 
 the academy at Birchfield for the past 
 year. He was twenty-seven, and Chloe 
 Mason was twenty. Her father was the 
 doctor in Birchfield, and when Roger came 
 up from Boston way to take the school, he 
 spent a few days in the doctor's house, until 
 he could find a settled boarding -place. 
 Chloe had been the head of the household 
 since her mother's death, and she sat at the 
 head of the table, and poured out Roger's 
 tea without looking towards him, so that it 
 could hardly be called love at sight in her. 
 But they both fell in love with each other 
 at once, and they began keeping company 
 almost from the first. 
 
 Before the end of the first year it was 
 known that they were engaged, but they 
 were not really engaged till quite near the 
 close of the spring term. Then she ran 
 away from home for a little visit at her 
 grandfather's in Medbury, to have a chance,
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 145 
 
 she said, to think it over. As soon as the 
 school closed he came after her ; he told her 
 that he came to help her think. She 
 answered him, from the fright and joy his 
 coming gave her, that this was a silly ex- 
 cuse, and she would hardly kiss him ; but 
 she let him stay till eleven o'clock, the night 
 he arrived, before she drove him away to 
 the tavern at the cross-roads where he had 
 put up. She said she guessed he would get 
 locked out if he was not careful ; and, in 
 fact, the landlord came down to let him in 
 with his night-clothes on, but chewing 
 tobacco as if it were high noon. That 
 was Friday night, and this was Saturday 
 morning. 
 
 The horse and chaise were her grand- 
 father's, and the squire told the young man 
 that if he was not going anywhere in par- 
 ticular, and not in a hurry to get there, the 
 horse was just the horse he wanted.
 
 146 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 III. 
 
 HPHEY started early, to be alone together 
 -L as long as they could, and they let the 
 horse loiter over the road at will. They 
 were not always quite certain where they 
 were, but again Chloe thought she knew ; 
 she used to be a great deal at her grand- 
 father's when she was little, and every now 
 and then she did really come to a place that 
 she remembered. 
 
 As they lingered on the way, they talked 
 without stopping a moment. Their love was 
 yet so newly owned that they were full 
 of delicious surprises for each other, whether 
 they found out that they were alike in a 
 thing, or unlike. 
 
 "What are you looking at so hard?" she 
 asked, at one time, and a little quaver 
 came into her voice, which almost died in 
 her throat from emotion. 
 
 "What are you looking at so hard?" he 
 demanded in turn ; and they took a fresh 
 hold upon each other's hands.
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 147 
 
 "I am not looking at anything," she 
 said, and she let her glance nutter away 
 from him to prove it. 
 
 "I am looking at something," he said. 
 " I am looking at your mouth." 
 
 " What for ? " she tempted him. 
 
 " To see why it is so beautiful. I am glad 
 it isn't one of those shallow mouths, that 
 seem just on the surface." 
 
 He continued to study her face with a 
 dreamy interest which she bore without 
 blushing. "Features don't seem to mean 
 much of anything if you take them separate- 
 ly ; and it 's the look in a face that keeps it 
 together. I wonder what it is makes your 
 look ? The soul, I suppose ; the features 
 don't, and it must be our souls that we 
 care for in one another. Don't you believe 
 so?" 
 
 ' ' Yes ; of course. It 's you I care for ; 
 and I should care just as much for you if 
 you were dead and gone, as I do now," said 
 the girl. 
 
 "When you went away," he continued, 
 "I tried to picture your face in my mind. 
 But I couldn't. You were just something 
 sweet and true ; something dear and lovely ; 
 but you had no form." 
 
 " Well, / could see you as plain as if you
 
 148 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 stood before me all the time. And you were 
 full as real." 
 
 " That is very curious." He resumed his 
 contemplation of her face, from the muse he 
 had fallen into. " How strange it all is. 
 Is this you, Chloe, or is something else you ? 
 When I think of you when I look at you " 
 
 She suddenly lost her patience. "Well, 
 don't look so at me ! " 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " As if you didn't see me ! " 
 
 "But I do see you ! " 
 
 "Well, then, look as if you did. Oh, 
 look out for that horse ! " The horse had 
 turned abruptly out of the road towards 
 a bit of pasturage near the wayside wall : 
 the chaise hung by one wheel at the edge of 
 the gully dividing the road from the grass 
 that had taken his fancy. * ' In another 
 minute we should have been tipped over. 
 Do be careful, Roger ! " she palpitated, after 
 he had recalled the horse from his wander- 
 ings, and set out with him again on theirs. 
 "If you can't drive any better than that, 
 you 'd better let me. " 
 
 " Would you like to drive ? You may ! " 
 
 "If I did, I shouldn't go to sleep over it. 
 How absent-minded j r ou are ! " 
 
 "Don't you like it?" 
 
 "I like you. Oh, don't! There's a
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 149 
 
 carriage coining ! I should think you would 
 be ashamed'! Well there, then ! And I 
 know they saw us ! " 
 
 "I don't believe they did. They were 
 too far off. See ! they are turning down 
 another road. " 
 
 " Well, do behave, anyway ! " 
 
 " May I put my arm around you ? " 
 
 "No, I want to talk seriously with you, 
 Roger ; and I can't think if you do that." 
 
 "How strange that is ! I wish you would 
 explain why you can't think if I put my arm 
 around you. What do you do if you don't 
 think?" 
 
 " How silly ! Feel, I presume." 
 
 "Well, why not feel, then? Feeling is 
 better than thinking, if love is feeling, isn't 
 it? But perhaps love is thinking, too." 
 
 "It ought to be," she sighed. "Or, at 
 least, we ought to think about it." 
 
 "Well, let us think about it, then; I 
 don't know a pleasanter subject. What do 
 you suppose it really is ? Why should I care 
 so much for you and nothing for another 
 person? What is the law of it? For it 
 must have a law. It wasn't blind chance 
 that made us care for each other. You can't 
 imagine our caring for any one else ? " 
 
 "No. I can't imagine that at all now." 
 
 "Now?"
 
 I5O A PAETIXG AND A MEETING. 
 
 "Why, I presume if I hadn't ever seen 
 you if you hadn't ever come to Birchfield 
 I might have got to caring for somebody else. 
 Ira Dickerman, very likely." She pulled 
 away to her corner of the chaise, and looked 
 at him with mocking laughter in her eyes. 
 
 The young man turned his face away, and 
 she looked forward and peered up into it to 
 see if she had vexed him. But he only said, 
 rather sadly : " Ira is smart. He will make 
 a good lawyer. He is more practical than I 
 am. Your father would rather have had 
 him, Chloe." 
 
 "Father can have him yet if he wants 
 him," said the girl, and they both laughed. 
 ' ' / don't. But I guess you can be practical 
 enough if you want to. " 
 ' " You 're afraid I sha'n't want to. Is that 
 what you 're going to be serious about ? " 
 
 "Not unless you wish I should, Roger," 
 she answered fondly. 
 
 "I do wish you should. How do you 
 think I could be more practical ? " 
 
 "Well, grandfather thinks you might 
 study law while you 're teaching ; he did. 
 And I don't believe he cares much for writing 
 poetry There ! / like it ! And I presume 
 they all think " 
 
 "What?"
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 151 
 
 " That you 're rather notional." 
 
 Roger sighed. 
 
 "I presume I shall always be a school- 
 master. I shall never be very well off, nor 
 get into Congress like Ira." 
 
 "Now, if you keep bringing up Ira 
 Dickerman " 
 
 "I won't. But I know they'd rather 
 "Well, I won't say it ! And they 're right 
 about me. I know I'm notional." He 
 was silent long enough to let her deny that 
 he was notional at all ; and then he said : 
 " There is one thing that troubles me, Chloe. 
 
 Last night I got to thinking Now, this 
 
 will make you angry ! " 
 
 "No, go on !" said the girl, and she took 
 a firmer grip of his hand to reassure him. 
 
 "You know what our thoughts are, and 
 how they won't be commanded ? Well, last 
 night I didn't sleep much. I got to thinking 
 about love." She blushed a little, and her 
 hand trembled in his. 
 
 " There 's something in me I don't know 
 how to explain it exactly that makes me 
 hate to have things fade out, and die out, 
 the way they all seem to do. I should like 
 to get something that would last. Now, the 
 way I look at married people, their love 
 doesn't seem to have lasted. They 're good
 
 152 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 friends sometimes, and I don't know but 
 most of the time but something 's gone, and 
 it seems to be their love. How did it go ? 
 When did it begin to go ? It seems now to 
 be the whole of life, and if life went on any- 
 where else, love ought to go on with it. If 
 we can't think how it had a beginning and 
 I can't ; it seems to me as if I always cared 
 for you " 
 
 "That's just the way it seems to me, 
 too," she murmured. 
 
 "Why, then, it oughtn't to be possible 
 for it to have an end." 
 
 "No." 
 
 Something in her tone made him look 
 up at her, for he had been talking with a 
 downward glance, in the way he had, and 
 now he saw her chin trembling. He was 
 beginning, "Do you believe " ; but he ended, 
 " I don't believe our love will pass away ; I 
 can't believe it." 
 
 She made two or three trials before she 
 could harden herself to say: "I don't see 
 how we're different from other folks." 
 
 " But we can be different. We can say, 
 here and now, that we will love each other 
 so that our love will never die as long as we 
 live, can't we? Let us think. Of course, 
 I know that you are beautiful, and I do love
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 1 53 
 
 your beauty. " She gave a little sob, and he 
 said, "Oh, don't !" 
 
 She pulled her hand away to make search 
 for her handkerchief. "It isn't anything. 
 I can't help it. I presume I like your 
 looks, too, Koger. Do you think that is 
 wrong ? " 
 
 She glimmered at him with wet eyes above 
 the handkerchief she held over her quiver- 
 ing mouth. 
 
 "Oh no! It can't be." 
 
 "But you think you think if we care for 
 each other's looks so much, and the looks 
 go that that " 
 
 "No, I don't think that." 
 
 " Yes, you do, Roger ! You must be 
 honest with me. You know you think that ! 
 Well, I hope I shall die, then, before my 
 looks go ; for if you didn't care for me " 
 
 " Chloe ! Do you think it was your looks 
 I fell in love with? You know it wasn't. 
 It was you you behind your looks. Some- 
 thing that was more you than all your looks 
 are. And I believe that my love for you 
 will last for ever, just what it is now." 
 
 "You are just saying that." 
 
 "Indeed, I am not. I believe that if 
 people truly love each other what is best 
 in each other as we do, their love cannot
 
 154 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 die. I know that you don't care for my looks 
 any more than I care for yours." 
 
 She had dried her eyes, but she shook 
 her head wofully, with so tragical a droop 
 of the corners of her mouth that when she 
 said innocently, "I don't know," Burton 
 broke out laughing, and dropped the reins 
 altogether to catch her in his arms and kiss 
 the droop out of both the corners. The 
 horse seized a moment favourable for brows- 
 ing, and drew up as skilfully as if he had 
 been driven to a wayside birch, and began 
 a tranquil satisfaction of his baffled appetite 
 for foliage. 
 
 "Poor girl ! Now I have made you un- 
 happy?" 
 
 "No, no !" she said, laughing and crying 
 at once, and struggling as much to keep 
 herself in his hold as to release herself from 
 it. "I am not unhappy at all. I am ex- 
 cited. And I said as much as you did I 
 was as much to blame I put you up to it. 
 I presume I'm crying more to think how 
 miserable I should be if I didn't trust you 
 so. But if I trust you I am not afraid, and 
 you may go on and say anything." 
 
 "No," he returned with a sort of serious 
 joy, "I have nothing more to say. And 
 perhaps you have got at the answer to the
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 155 
 
 riddle. If we always have faith we shall 
 have love. Or, turn it the other way ; 
 it's true that way, too." 
 
 "He sat, letting her get back her spirits 
 and repair her looks, and he would perhaps 
 not have started of his own motion at all. 
 When she put her handkerchief back into 
 her pocket at last, she said gently : " Don't 
 you think we'd better drive on, Roger? 
 I 'm afraid it's getting late." 
 
 He pulled out the burly silver watch 
 whose seal dangled by a black ribbon from 
 his fob. 
 
 "It's only eleven, we can easily get back 
 by twelve, if we can only find out where we 
 are, and start right. " 
 
 She looked out to the right and left, and 
 then stood up and peered around. " I don't 
 seem to know anything here. It 's a judg- 
 ment on us for talking so, if we 're lost ! " 
 
 "Then yonder 's a sign of forgiveness," 
 said Roger, and he pointed with his whip 
 towards the finger-board at the cross-roads 
 a little way in front of them. 
 
 "So it is!" she cried joyfully, and she 
 composed herself in her seat again, while 
 Roger prevailed with the old horse to go so 
 much further as to bring them in reading 
 range of the finger-board. It pointed with
 
 156 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 one finger towards the little hamlet or group 
 of houses where Chloe's grandfather lived, 
 seven miles away. 
 
 " Dear ! " she cried. " I don't see how we 
 ever got so far, or how we came. We shall 
 be dreadfully late to dinner." 
 
 "Did they expect us back!" asked the 
 young man. 
 
 "I don't know. I presume so. I did 
 tell grandfather we might go to Louisburg. 
 What does it say on the other side ? " 
 
 He urged the horse a little way round, so 
 as to read on the reverse of the board 
 
 SHAKERS, ONE-HALF MILE. 
 
 " Oh, now I know where I am ! " she 
 exulted. * ' Did you ever go to a Shaker 
 village ? " and she hardly waited for him to 
 say no. "Well, then, it's the greatest 
 thing in the world to see ; and I can't think 
 why I didn't bring you here in the first 
 place. I can get grandmother's things here 
 just as well, and a great deal better ; I told 
 her that if we went to Louisburg I 'd go to 
 the store for her, but now it 's all turned out 
 for the best, and I can show you the Shaker 
 village. I used to come here with grand- 
 father when I was little. He did some law
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 157 
 
 business for them. You Ve surely heard of 
 them, Roger ? " 
 
 " Oh yes ; but I don't remember what, 
 exactly. Do they have a tavern ? Perhaps 
 we could get dinner there." 
 
 " Yes ; we could. They have no tavern, 
 but they entertain anybody that asks. If 
 you haven't ever been in a Shaker settlement 
 drive right straight along, Roger I guess 
 you'll think it the most curious place you 
 were ever in. They think they 're like the 
 early Christians ; they live all in two or 
 three big families, and own everything to- 
 gether. They came in here from York State, 
 and they say Mother Ann saw the place in 
 a vision before they came." 
 
 " Mother Ann ? " 
 
 " Yes ; she 's the one that founded them ; 
 they believe she had revelations. Folks say 
 they have a little pen on the side of the hill 
 behind the village, and they think they have 
 got Satan shut up in it. Grandfather doesn't 
 believe they think that. They think they 
 are living the angelic life here on earth, and 
 they dance in their meetings." 
 
 Roger tried to get the horse in motion. 
 
 "Well, let us go there, then ! I should 
 like to know what the angelic life looks 
 like."
 
 158 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 " Well, if it's like thai," said Chloe, and 
 she laughed as if at some grotesque memory. 
 
 " Are they so ridiculous ? " 
 
 "No. Not always. And I can't under- 
 stand folks going^to make fun, the way some 
 do. It isn't dancing exactly, it 's more like 
 marching. And they have preaching, and 
 singing of their own kind that the spirits 
 gave them. It 's a pity it isn't Sunday, so 
 that we could go to one of their meetings. 
 I don't know as it 's right to go to a meeting 
 just out of curiosity, though. Do you think 
 it would be ? " 
 
 '* You seem to have done so." 
 
 " Grandfather took me, and I was little ; 
 grandmother didn't like it, even then, I 
 guess. I don't know whether we better go 
 to the Shakers after all, Roger ! " 
 
 "But we can't go to their meeting to-day, 
 you say " 
 
 "No, that's true. I forgot. And I 
 suppose it will be about the best thing 
 we can do. It's rather of an old story to 
 me." 
 
 " Then we won't go, Chloe. I don't care 
 for it, unless you do." 
 
 "Yes, yes. Go on. I only wanted to 
 know if you really did care." 
 
 He shook the reins again and said, " Get
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 159 
 
 up," and the horse looked round as if to 
 assure himself that it was he was meant. 
 He made a final snatch at random among 
 the nearest boughs, and came off with his 
 mouth full of pine-needles.
 
 160 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE grassy-bordered sandy street of the 
 village was silent and empty under the 
 shade of the stiff maples. The lovers drove 
 slowly through, looking out on either side of 
 the chaise for some one to speak with ; but 
 no sign of life showed itself in the dwelling- 
 houses, or in the gardens above or below 
 the thoroughfare, which divided the slope 
 where the village lay. Sounds of labour 
 made themselves vaguely heard from the 
 shops set here and there along the road ; 
 and from further up the hillside came the 
 stamping of horses in the great barns. 
 
 But there was such a stillness in the air, 
 which muffled these noises, that the lovers 
 involuntarily sank their voices in speaking 
 together. " I don't know where to go, 
 exactly," said Roger. "I can't find any- 
 body." 
 
 "Oh, well, don't let's stop then," Chloe 
 answered. "Let us go right on through.
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. l6l 
 
 I don't know as I want to stop very much, 
 anyway." 
 
 He did not hear her, perhaps, or perhaps 
 his curiosity was now piqued, and he was 
 not willing to go further without satisfying 
 it. He was craning his neck round the side 
 of the chaise, and looking back at the door- 
 way of one of the buildings. 
 
 "I thought I saw some one in that house 
 at the door." 
 
 She looked back too. "Why, of course ! 
 That's the office. I remember it just as 
 well ! I don't see what I mean, acting so. 
 Turn right around, Roger ! That 's where 
 they entertain strangers. What could I be 
 thinking of?" Her tremor of reluctance, 
 whatever it was from, was past, and she 
 urged him to a feat which had its diffi- 
 culties. He turned and drove back. 
 
 On the threshold of the building where 
 they drove up, a Shaker brother was stand- 
 ing. 
 
 " Sir, good morning ! " the young man 
 called politely to him. "Could I put up 
 my horse somewhere ? We should like to 
 see the village, if you allow strangers." 
 
 "Yee," said the brother. "I will take 
 your horse," and he came down the steps to 
 the horse's head.
 
 1 62 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 Roger helped Chloe out, and he saw that 
 her eyes were red and her cheeks blurred 
 from the tears she had shed. "Wouldn't 
 you like some water ? " he whispered ; and 
 she gasped back, "Yes." 
 
 "Could we get some water inside?" he 
 asked the brother. 
 
 "Yee; you can go into the office with 
 the young woman. The sisters will give 
 you some water. I will see to your horse."
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 163 
 
 V. 
 
 WITHIN, it was all cool and bare and 
 clean. A sister came through the 
 carpetless hallway towards them, and offered 
 to show them into the little parlour beside 
 the door. 
 
 Chloe looked at her, and then, after a first 
 timid glance, broke into a smile. "I used 
 to come here with my grandfather, Squire 
 Pullen, when I was a little girl. Don't you 
 remember me ? " 
 
 "Nay," said the sister, briefly; but she 
 let her eyes wander from the girl's flushing 
 face to the young man's with a demure and 
 not unfriendly interest. 
 
 "Well," said Chloe, "we wanted to see 
 the village if we could, and I should like 
 somewhere to fix my hair ; I 'm afraid it 's 
 coming down." 
 
 "I will take you to a room," answered 
 the sister; and she nodded Roger towards 
 the parlour door, "You can go in there." 
 
 It was cool and clean, like the hall, and it
 
 164 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 seemed as bare, though there were chairs 
 and a settee in it, and some hooked rugs on 
 the floor. There was even a looking-glass, 
 and on a table under it were some Shaker 
 books and papers, a life of Ann Lee, and a 
 volume of doctrine. He took this up, and 
 he had it in his hand when Chloe returned 
 with the sister, smiling and flushing, and 
 looking very gay and happy. " This is Mr. 
 Burton," she said. "Mr. Burton, this is 
 Sister Candace." 
 
 The sister smiled and stood apart from 
 the pair, looking them over and taking in 
 the fashion of their worldly dress, as well as 
 their young beauty. But she did not say 
 anything, and Burton, after a formal pro- 
 fession of his pleasure in making her 
 acquaintance, had to leave the word to 
 Chloe, who kept talking, and would not let 
 him appear awkward. After a moment the 
 sister said: "I will go and see to the 
 dinner," and then Chloe ran over to Roger 
 and hurried to say, under her breath: "I 
 had to tell her, because I knew she would 
 guess it anyway ; and she knows grand- 
 father, and I didn't want her to think 
 that I would go wandering about with 
 just anybody ; I saw she wanted to ask ; 
 and she was so pleased. I. had to tell
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 165 
 
 her all about you, and I don't believe but 
 what she thinks you 're pretty nice appear- 
 ing, Roger. I could tell by the way she 
 looked at you. But, of course, she couldn't 
 say much. Do I look now as if I had been 
 crying any ? " 
 
 He glanced at her face, turned innocently 
 upon him. " You don't look as if you had 
 ever shed a tear." 
 
 " Well, I can't believe I ever did." 
 
 " I wish I could believe I hadn't made 
 you." 
 
 " Oh, pshaw ! You didn't. I was just 
 nervous. I cry too easily. I have got to 
 break myself of it ; and you mustn't think 
 it means anything, because it doesn't. Don't 
 you suppose I knew just what you meant? 
 I did, perfectly well, all the time." She put 
 out the hand that was next him, and gave 
 his a little clutch, and after that she began 
 to talk in a very loud voice about the things 
 in the room. From time to time she dropped 
 her voice, and once she explained in an 
 undertone that she had asked Sister Candace 
 whether they could have dinner. ' ' I didn't 
 know but you would hate to ask," and 
 Roger said gratefully, yes; and he was 
 much obliged to her. 
 
 " You know, I'm so used to their ways;
 
 1 66 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 or I used to be ; but I could see how it took 
 you aback when they said just yea and nay 
 to you. You mustn't mind it ; they do it 
 because the Bible says so. They do say yee, 
 but that's just the way they pronounce 
 it." 
 
 She patronised him a little from the pin- 
 nacle of her early familiarity with the 
 Shakers, and explained what the office 
 was, and how it was for business and the 
 reception of visitors from the world-outside. 
 
 " Then you don't suppose they will let us 
 go into the family houses," he said rather 
 disappointedly. 
 
 " Why, I '11 ask Sister Candace when we're 
 at dinner," Chloe answered consolingly. 
 " I don't believe they let everybody, but I 
 guess they '11 let us. They think so much of 
 grandfather."
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 1 67 
 
 VI. 
 
 AN old man came out of the doorway 
 across the hall, and looked in upon 
 them. " Is this Friend Pullen's grand- 
 daughter?" he asked. He had a shrewd 
 face, but kindly, and he spoke neatly, with 
 a Scotch accent. 
 
 " Yes ! " said Chloe. " And I remember 
 you, Elder Lindsley. You haven't changed 
 at all since I used to come here with grand- 
 father. Did you know me ? " 
 
 " Nay," said the elder. " They told me 
 in the office. I am very pleased to see you. 
 You are quite a young woman." He spoke 
 to her, but his eyes wandered to Roger. 
 
 Hers followed them, and she said, " This 
 is Mr. Burton, Elder Lindsley ; and we 're 
 he 's never been in a Shaker village before 
 and I thought he teaches the academy at 
 Birchfield and do you suppose we could go 
 into some of the family houses ? " 
 
 " Oh yee," the old man answered, and he 
 gave Roger his hand. " We shall be very 
 pleased to have you. They said that you were 
 engaged to be married to the young woman."
 
 1 68 A PARTING AXD A MEETING. 
 
 "My!" answered Chloe, "has she told 
 already ! " and she laughed, while Roger 
 blushed, and mumbled a confession of the 
 fact. 
 
 " Well, you must come and see how we 
 live in our families without being married." 
 
 " I have been reading something about 
 your system here," said Roger, and he looked 
 down at the volume of doctrine on the table. 
 
 " I suppose it appears strange to you," 
 the elder returned. " But we try to live as 
 Jesus Christ lived in all things. If you are 
 a teacher, you will have read a great many 
 books " 
 
 " Not so very many," Roger interposed 
 modestly. 
 
 " And you will know that we are not so 
 singular in our way of life as the folks around 
 us have imagined. We are of an order which 
 has appeared in every religion." 
 
 " Yes, I know," the young man admitted. 
 "It is the same principle that has led men 
 out of the world in all ages. I understand 
 that." 
 
 " Yes. The inspiration of the angelic life 
 has never ceased, and you find its effect in 
 the celibacy of the Buddhists as well as the 
 Roman Catholics, and the Essenes of the 
 Hebrews."
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 169 
 
 VII. 
 
 CHLOE looked at Roger with a novel awe 
 for him as one to whom such esoteric 
 things could be intelligibly spoken. Perhaps 
 a little fear mingled with her pride ; they 
 removed him from her, and she brightened 
 when, after the talk got further away, Sister 
 Candace appeared at the parlour, and brought 
 her the hope of getting it back to familiar 
 ground again. 
 
 The elder said promptly, " I hope you have 
 asked the young friends to stay to dinner 
 with you, Candace." 
 
 "Nay," said the Sister. "But we have 
 got them dinner." 
 
 "They must be your guests," said the 
 elder. 
 
 "Yee; we shall be much pleased," she 
 returned. 
 
 "And after dinner," he said to Roger, 
 " some of the Sisters will show the young 
 woman and yourself through the family 
 houses. We shall see each other again 
 before you go." 
 
 He went out, and the lovers followed the
 
 I7O A PARTING AND A MEETING 
 
 Sister to a stairway descending to a base- 
 ment at the end of the hall. Roger looked 
 round after the old man. The Sister 
 explained to his returning glance, "Elder 
 Lindsley eats in the church-family house. 
 He is one of the ministers." 
 
 She took her guests into a room where a 
 table was laid with such simple and whole- 
 some abundance that Chloe cried out at the 
 sight : " Why, you look as if you had been 
 expecting us for a week, Candace ! " 
 
 "We are always expecting some one," 
 said the Sister. "At least, we are always 
 prepared. " 
 
 "Do you mean," the young man de- 
 manded, "that you give meals to any who 
 come to you ? " 
 
 "Yee. Give to him that asketh," the 
 Sister returned. 
 
 They seemed to be alone in the room with 
 her ; but if Chloe looked round, it was to 
 glimpse, at a half-opened door, some vanish- 
 ing face which had been fixed upon herself 
 or on Roger. 
 
 When Sister Candace had placed them at 
 table, and gone out to get their dinner in 
 the kitchen adjoining, it was not she who re- 
 turned, but another Sister, and it was still 
 a third who came to take the things away.
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE same curiosity followed them or went 
 before them in the dwellings they visited, 
 after they had finished their dinner, and 
 the office Sisters delivered them over to 
 the other Sisters. Some rumour of their 
 relation to each other seemed to have spread 
 through the quiet community, and stirred it 
 from its wonted calm. Perhaps some of 
 them remembered Chloe when she was a 
 little girl, and used to visit them with her 
 grandfather. Perhaps it was enough that 
 any young girl should be among them with 
 the young man she was going to marry. 
 They were met everywhere by more Sisters 
 than sufficed to show them through the 
 huge dwellings, which they explored in 
 every part, with joyful outcry from Chloe 
 at the perfection of all the domestic ap- 
 pointments, apparent to her housekeeping 
 instincts. She made Roger notice how 
 sweet and clean the white-scrubbed floors 
 were ; how the windows shone, and not a
 
 172 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 speck of dust rested on chair or table, or 
 even quivered in the pure air, which it was 
 a pleasure to breathe. In the kitchen she 
 said she should like to spend her whole life 
 in such a place. She questioned the Sisters 
 about their way of doing their work, and 
 their preserving and pickling. 
 
 From her superabundant joy in her own 
 fate she flattered them in theirs, and pre- 
 tended to wish she, too, could have such a 
 room as many they saw, appointed for two 
 Sisters to dwell together, with two white 
 beds, two rocking-chairs, two stands, and a 
 sturdy wood stove, and rugs over the spot- 
 less floors. She should like nothing better, 
 she sighed, with a sweet hypocrisy ; and she 
 would not appear conscious of her interest 
 for the Sisters, singly or in groups, whom 
 they met, and who greeted or pursued her 
 with her eager eyes, as she came up and 
 passed by, in silent homage to a girl who 
 was engaged to be married, and who would 
 be important from that fact to women 
 anywhere, let alone in a place where nobody 
 ever got married. She put Roger forward 
 when he was not sufficiently evident. She 
 laughed to him in pleasure with this or 
 that ; she made jokes to him, and coquetted 
 for him with the Sisters. 
 
 In one of the great rooms where the
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 173 
 
 family meetings were held, she tried the 
 spring of the floor which had been laid for 
 the marching or dancing of the Shaker 
 worship ; and as she stood in the centre of 
 the place, with her slender arms stretched 
 out and her reticule dangling from one 
 wrist, and looked down to find her little 
 feet beneath her deep ruffles, perhaps she 
 knew that she made a charming picture, 
 and wished to be envied. 
 
 It was at this moment that the old 
 minister who had preached joined the group 
 at the door, and smiled at her over the 
 shoulders of the Sisters. The little involun- 
 tary flutter among them spread electrically 
 to her. She quailed in a deprecation half 
 sincere, half saucy. 
 
 "Nay," the old man called to her. "It 
 is no harm. Wouldn't you like to be a 
 Shaker Sister, and dance here with us ? " - 
 
 "In this dress?" she cried, putting its 
 worldly prettiness in evidence. 
 
 "Yee, if you chose. As long as you 
 wished to wear it we should not object." 
 
 "Oh, I never believed the Shakers were 
 so wicked," she said audaciously ; and now 
 she left her place, and came and sheltered 
 herself next her lover, who was standing 
 near the minister. 
 
 "I was wondering," the old man said,
 
 174 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 still smiling kindly upon her, "whether you 
 would like to look at the barns and shops 
 and gardens. You have seen how we live ; 
 you should see how we work." 
 
 "No, I am too tired," she began, with a 
 glance at Roger. 
 
 "Then the young man would like to 
 come ? " the minister suggested. 
 
 "Very much ; I should like to come very 
 much, indeed. And I should like to talk 
 with you a little more about your life here !" 
 
 Roger had not spoken with so much 
 energy before ; there was almost passion in 
 his voice, so that she looked at him in 
 surprise. 
 
 A shadow of vexation passed over her 
 face, but left it fond again. 
 
 "Well, then, I will wait for you in the 
 office. But you mustn't be very long. They 
 will wonder what has kept us so, at grand- 
 father's." 
 
 " We will go as far as the office with you," 
 said the minister. "It is on our way. I 
 must see the office Sisters, and give them 
 their charges about not trying to make a 
 Shaker of you. They are great hands for 
 gathering folks in." 
 
 "Oh, I will look out for that !" the girl 
 mocked back.
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 175 
 
 "Well," said the old man soberly, "I 
 should like to have you realise that we are 
 just a large family of brothers and sisters, 
 and nothing else. There is nothing unnatural 
 about us when you come to know us truly." 
 
 "I don't think there's anything strange 
 about you, Elder Lindsley," said the girl 
 affectionately. "I used to want to be a 
 Shaker Sister when I was little, and came 
 here with grandfather; and to-day it's 
 brought it all back. I know that you are 
 just like brothers and sisters, and more so 
 than the real ones oftentimes ; and if 
 
 if I know you think you are living 
 
 the true life, and I only hope you won't 
 look down on us too much, if we can't." 
 She laughed, but the elder replied seriously 
 
 "Nay, you mustn't think we look down 
 on marriage, or condemn it ; that is a mis- 
 take that the world-outside often makes 
 concerning us. Jesus did not marry, but he 
 made the water wine at a marriage feast. 
 He said that in heaven there was neither 
 marrying nor giving in marriage, and Ann 
 taught by her example that there could be 
 no angelic life in marriage, but in freedom 
 from marriage ; the angelic life could begin 
 before death as well as after death. We do 
 not say that marriage is wrong ; and wo
 
 i;6 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 know that there are many happy marriages, 
 which are entered into from pure affection. 
 I am sure we all wish and hope that yours 
 will be so. " 
 
 " Oh, thank you, Elder Lindsley. We are 
 both going to try to be good, and if we are 
 not happy well, it won't be Roger's fault. " 
 
 The old man smiled at the gay tears that 
 came into the eyes she turned on her lover. 
 But he resumed with increasing earnestness : 
 " If it were my place to advise you " 
 
 " Yes, yes ! It is ! " 
 
 "Or, if I were to counsel with you, I 
 should warn you against the very strength 
 of your affection. The love that unites 
 young people cannot keep its promise of 
 happiness. It seems to give all, but it really 
 asks all. The man and the woman suppose 
 that they love one another unselfishly ; but 
 it is the very life of such love that each 
 should be loved again ; and this is not the 
 law of heavenly love. If any one will prove 
 the truth of what I say, let him think of 
 what comes into the heart of the man or 
 woman who loves, and doubts if he or she 
 be equally loved again." 
 
 "Yes," said the girl. "That is what I 
 have often thought, and I know that it is 
 selfish. But we can make it unselfish ; and
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 177 
 
 we are going to. That is, each one is going 
 to try to live up to a higher rule. " 
 
 The minister passed this vague expression 
 of a vague aspiration. "All we say of 
 Shakerism is that it is a city of refuge from 
 self. It welcomes all who would be at 
 peace ; it gives rest. You must not think 
 that we are not men and women of like 
 nature with others, and that it has cost us 
 nothing to renounce the Adamic order of 
 life. We have had our thoughts and long- 
 ings for wife and husband and children, and 
 the homes they build. Nay, several among 
 us have known all the happiness that the 
 marriage relation can give, and have volun- 
 tarily abandoned it for the gospel relation. 
 At the same time, as I said before, we do 
 not condemn marriage. Marriage is the best 
 thing in the world, but not the best thing 
 out of the world. Few things are more 
 pleasing to us than the sight of a young 
 couple living rightly in their order ; and we 
 honour, as much as any one, a father and 
 mother dwelling together at the end of a 
 long life, with their children and their 
 grandchildren around them. Only, even in 
 those cases, we remember that marriage is 
 earthly and human, and our gospel relation 
 is divine."
 
 i;8 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 " Oh yes, indeed ! " said the girl gene- 
 rously. 
 
 They were at the office gate, where Roger 
 and the minister left her. "I won't be 
 long," Roger said. She looked round over 
 her shoulder, after they turned away, and 
 caught her lover looking back. She swept 
 the environment with a lightning glance, 
 and then flung him a swift kiss, and de- 
 murely mounted the office steps and went 
 indoors.
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 179 
 
 IX. 
 
 T)URTON did not return for a long while, 
 J3 and Chloe, where she sat in talk with 
 the office Sisters, made excuses for him from 
 time to time. At last she saw him through 
 the window at the office gate. Elder Linds- 
 ley had come back with him, but he seemed 
 to be taking leave of him there; and she 
 heard him saying: "It is something that 
 requires serious reflection. It is not to be 
 decided rashly." 
 
 "I shall do nothing rash," the young 
 man replied. " But if I see the truth " 
 
 The old man lifted his hand in a sort of 
 deprecation, and walked away. Roger came 
 up the steps and into the parlour, with a 
 face that made the girl laugh. 
 
 "I don't wonder you're scared," she 
 began. "But if it's late, I'm as much to 
 blame as you are, I guess. I didn't notice 
 till a minute ago that it was nearly four. 
 But now I think we better be going. I don't 
 know what grandmother will think."
 
 l8o A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 "I will get the horse," said Burton, with 
 the same air of distraction. 
 
 When they were in the chaise again, and 
 driving away, after as many farewells from 
 her, smiled and nodded at the office Sisters, 
 as he would stay for, she broke out : "Well, 
 I have had the greatest time ! Don't you 
 believe, I had to tell the Sisters all about 
 how we first met, and everything ! They 
 were just as pleased to know as anybody ; 
 and they asked when we expected to be 
 married, and whether we were going to keep 
 house, or stay on with father ; and how old 
 you were, and I was ; and whether your 
 father and mother were living, and you 
 belonged to church ; and I don't know what 
 else ! I guess you '11 think I was pretty silly 
 to talk with them so ; and I don't know but 
 I was ; but I saw they did want to know so. 
 They were real nice, too ; and they did 
 make a set at me, just as Elder Lindsley 
 said they would. They asked me whether I 
 saw anything about their life I didn't like, 
 for they wanted to know oftentimes how it 
 seemed to the world-outside ; and when I 
 praised it up, and said I didn't see a thing 
 in it that wasn't just as sweet as it could be, 
 and you didn't either, that gave them a 
 chance, and they said the whole family had
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. l8l 
 
 taken the greatest fancy to us, and why 
 couldn't we come and live with them? I 
 couldn't hardly believe my ears, but they 
 were in dead earnest ; they are so innocent. 
 I tried to laugh it off ; and I told them we 
 would, maybe, when we were old folks ; 
 but they said they had old folks enough, 
 and they wanted young people to join them. 
 They told me all about Mother Ann, and 
 the persecution they used to suffer here; 
 and about their spiritual experiences ; and 
 they talked their doctrine into me good and 
 strong, so that I began to get a little bit 
 frightened one while ; I didn't know what 
 they would say next. I guess they saw that, 
 because they began to turn the subject. 
 They had lots of stories about the different 
 visitors, and what they seemed to expect to 
 see ; and how they wanted to go all through 
 the dwelling-houses, and couldn't under- 
 stand how they were just like any other 
 private house. I guess we have been parti- 
 cularly privileged, because they said it was 
 only when they saw folks really cared that 
 they let them go through. They all admire 
 you, Roger," she went on, with a fond look 
 at his dreamy face; "and I guess if they 
 could get hold of you, they wouldn't trouble 
 much about gathering me in ! " She laughed
 
 1 82 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 at her own words, and did not mind his 
 continuing grave. "One of the Sisters said 
 they wanted educated people to help spread 
 the truth among people from the world-out- 
 side when they came to meeting ; and another 
 said that gone look in your face made her 
 think of prophesying ; but I told her that it 
 was nothing but mooning, and we got into 
 a perfect gale. But if you did join the 
 Shakers, Roger, I guess they'd pet you up 
 enough, and they wouldn't object to all the 
 poetry you were a mind to make. Why, 
 Roger, what is the matter ? " 
 
 " With me ? " asked the young man, with 
 a sudden turn towards her. 
 
 "Yes; you haven't spoken a word since 
 we started ; and I do believe this is the first 
 time you 've even looked at me ! " There 
 was a little note of indignation in her voice, 
 which was half a tremor of laughter, for 
 though he was staring hard enough at her 
 now, he seemed not to see her. " Has 
 anything happened? Did Elder Lindsley 
 say something you didn't like? You look 
 as cross as two sticks ! " 
 
 "I'm not cross," Burton began. "He 
 said nothing that wasn't perfectly " 
 
 "Did he make a set at you, too? I 
 didn't believe he would, after he warned me
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 183 
 
 so against the Sisters. But didn't you 
 think he spoke beautifully about marriage 
 praising it up the way he did?" 
 
 "Praise up marriage!" the young man 
 echoed. " He condemned it." 
 
 " Not at all ! He said it was the best 
 thing in the world. Didn't you hear him 
 say they did not condemn it ? " 
 
 " Yes, but he said that in the heavenly 
 order " 
 
 " Oh, well, he had to say that because he 
 was a Shaker. He had to defend himself, 
 somehow." 
 
 Roger looked at the gay, bright face so 
 close to his shoulder, and whatever he might 
 have answered, he said nothing. 
 
 "But I like the Shakers," she ran on. 
 " / think they are as nice as they can be ; 
 and if folks live the way they do, I don't 
 see as anybody has a right to say anything. 
 How sweet the Sisters do look ; and so 
 clean ! And the Brothers, all of them, with 
 their hair all coming down their necks, that 
 way, and their white collars close up under 
 their chins ? But it seems very funny the 
 men should let their hair grow long, and the 
 women crop theirs off short. You know they 
 have it cropped off short under their caps ? " 
 
 " No, I didn't know that."
 
 184 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 " Yes. Sister Candace said so when I 
 was fixing mine. But she said mine was 
 she said nicer things about it than you ever 
 did, Roger. Why, how absent-minded you 
 are \ What were you thinking about then 
 just that very minute ? " 
 
 "I? I wasn't saying anything !" 
 
 " Of course you were not ! And I don't 
 believe you were thinking anything either, 
 if the truth was known. What was it 
 you and Elder Lindsley were talking about 
 there at the gate ? You said, ' If I see the 
 
 truth ' I guess the Sisters thought you 
 
 were going to prophesy ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " Roger came to himself in an 
 outcry which seemed partly a recognition of 
 the fact, and partly a burst of perplexity. 
 He tried several times to find the next word, 
 but the reins slipped from his hands, and he 
 groped, as if in the dark, for them on the 
 floor of the chaise before he spoke again. 
 "It was something we had been talking 
 about. Why did it seem so strange to you 
 that the Sisters should want us to join 
 them ? " He looked at her now steadily, 
 but with the vagueness that was always in 
 his eyes. "Did you think they hadn't a 
 right to do it ? " 
 
 "Of course they had a right to do it!
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 185 
 
 If they believe they 're leading the angelic 
 life, it's only common charity for them to 
 want other folks to lead it too." 
 
 He winced a little, as if at a lurking 
 mockery at her answer, but he asked : 
 "And should you blame Elder Lindsley if 
 he had tried to persuade me, as the Sisters 
 tried to persuade you ? " 
 
 She hesitated a moment. " I don't know 
 as I should." She added gaily: "But I 
 wish I could have heard what he said, and 
 what you said back." 
 
 "And what should you think," he re- 
 turned austerely, " if I told you that I said 
 nothing back ? " 
 
 "I don't understand you, Roger," she 
 answered, with a tender anxiety, and she 
 tried to steal her hand into that hand of his 
 which lay on his knee next to her. But his 
 hand was gathered into a fist, and she failed, 
 and withdrew herself into her corner of the 
 chaise. " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean," he burst out, " that there is 
 no answer to make to them ; that their 
 doctrine is right, and their life is right." 
 He seemed to wish to go on, but the impulse 
 that had carried him so far failed him. 
 
 She was too Puritan in race to let him 
 shrink from the logic of his words. " Then
 
 1 86 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 you would like to be a Shaker yourself?" 
 she said gravely ; and she looked steadily 
 at him from as great a distance as she could 
 make between them in the chaise. 
 
 He held his face doggedly away. " Didn't 
 you tell the Sisters pretty much the same 
 thing?" 
 
 "That isn't the question," she answered 
 more gently. "I told them I saw nothing 
 to blame in their way of life." 
 
 " A thing cannot be blameless and yet be 
 an error," he interrupted. " They are right, 
 or they are wrong." 
 
 That was logic, too ; and she could not 
 gainsay him. In her silence he went on : 
 " Nothing that Elder Lindsley said con- 
 vinced me ; he tried to hold me back. But 
 I saw the truth, for myself in the light of 
 the gospel, that shined round about me 
 suddenly, as it shone round Paul. Those 
 people have found peace and all the rest 
 of the world is at war. ' By their fruits 
 ye shall know them.' It must be that 
 they are right ! They live as brothers and 
 sisters as angels. Yes, it is the angelic 
 life!" 
 
 She only repeated, ' ' Then you would like 
 to be a Shaker yourself ? " 
 
 He did not answer her directly. " I can
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 1 87 
 
 remember my own father and mother, even. 
 They thought all the world of each other, 
 but they were always disputing and quarrel- 
 ling ; and look around at all the married 
 people ? Every house is a scene of conten- 
 tion. Will against will always ! Your 
 grandfather and grandmother, who have 
 lived together for fifty years, do they agree ? 
 But the Shakers have peace ; the kingdom 
 of heaven has come to them on earth." 
 
 "Then you would like to be a Shaker, 
 too," she repeated again, but less harshly 
 than before. 
 
 " I can be nothing without you, Chloe ! 
 We should not care less for each other, but 
 differently. Let us both I have had this 
 day a vision of the truth, and now I see 
 that all we have thought, all we have hoped, 
 from our our love, is a mistake, a snare, 
 a delusion ! But there is another love ! 
 There are Brothers and Sisters there who 
 were once husbands and wives. I feel bound 
 as much as they were. But we could join the 
 Shakers, and be as free as they are as the 
 angels are I have hurt your feelings ! " 
 
 "Ah," cried the girl, "you don't know 
 what you Ve done ! It isn't my feelings 
 you 've hurt ! " And perhaps in these words 
 she meant to express what was otherwise
 
 1 88 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 unsayable ; the wound to something deeper 
 than feeling, to her womanhood itself, to 
 what was most sacred and most helpless in 
 it. "Do you expect me to argue with you, 
 Roger ? To tell you that I wish to be your 
 wife, if you don't wish to be my husband ? " 
 
 "No, no ! Surely not that ! I only wish 
 you to see this step as I do, and to take it 
 with me. " 
 
 She slowly shook her head, and he 
 added 
 
 "For I can never take it without you ! " 
 
 "Yes, you can, Roger!" she returned. 
 "And you will, if you are convinced. But 
 are you really, really in earnest? No, you 
 needn't tell me ! " She was silent, and then 
 she said desolately, "Well, I won't stand 
 in your way ! I knew I wasn't equal to 
 you " 
 
 "Chloe!" 
 
 "And I always thought something would 
 happen. Oh, I guess I 'm punished enough 
 for going to the Shakers with you ! " 
 
 "It was providential it was ordered, 
 Chloe. Come back with me, and let us talk 
 it over with them ; and then, if you can't 
 see it as I do " 
 
 "You'll give it up, and come away with 
 me ? No, thank you, Roger ! I won't be a
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 189 
 
 stumbling-block to you, and I would sooner 
 
 die than I don't blame you ; and I want 
 
 you should go back to the Shakers. Yes, I 
 do ! Right now ! " She laid her hands 
 upon the reins, and the old horse was only 
 too willing to stop. 
 
 " Chloe, I will never go without you ! " 
 
 " You will never go with me. And now, 
 if you have a grain of pity in you, you'll 
 get out, and let me go home alone. I can 
 find the way, if you 're not here to blind me. 
 My head 's all in a whirl I can't take it in ! 
 I thought we had the highest claim to each 
 other ; and that there was something 
 something we oughtn't to give up, even for 
 the sake of getting to heaven. / wouldn't 
 have done it. But I don't blame you, 
 Roger, if you don't see it so. I can't go to 
 the Shakers with you, but you can go, and I 
 will let you, freely ; and if it is on your con- 
 science, I will never have one hard thought 
 of you and I wish you to go. Oh ! " She 
 broke into a passion of grief, which was 
 partly that of astonishment, for he rose, as 
 if to obey her, and get down from the chaise. 
 
 * ' Roger, Roger ! are you really going to 
 leave me? " 
 
 "You said to do it." 
 
 "But what shall I do?" she pleaded
 
 I QO A PARTING AND A MEETING, 
 
 piteously. " What shall I say to them at 
 grandfather's ? " 
 
 "I will stay and take you home ; and I 
 will tell them myself. There is no haste. 
 I will go home with you to your grand- 
 father's your father's. We can go back to 
 Birchfield, and I will tell your father I 
 will explain to him." 
 
 He had sat down again and taken the 
 reins. She caught them fiercely from him. 
 "Do you think I will let you appear so be- 
 fore them ? No ! / will tell them ; / will 
 explain ! And I will go down on my 
 knees to them in shame. Yes, they were 
 right about you, Roger Burton, and I was 
 the simpleton to believe in you, to trust 
 you. Oh, I am punished ! Are you staying 
 here because you think I will change ? If 
 you stay, I will get out myself, and walk to 
 grandfather's." 
 
 "I will not make you walk, but I will 
 follow you " and now he really dismounted. 
 
 "Don't you dare!" she cried. "Oh, I 
 forgive you, Roger ! You don't know how 
 much I forgive you. You can never know." 
 
 She began to moan and to cry ; she 
 pulled weakly at the reins, and the old 
 horse started on. 
 
 Roger stood in the road and watched the 
 chaise out of sight.
 
 T 
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 X. 
 
 HE Brethren and the Sisters were 
 gathering in the church building for 
 the Sunday morning service. They came 
 from the West Family and the East Family, 
 in little groups of the different sexes, mov- 
 ing silently along the grassy borders of the 
 sandy village street, and they silently issued 
 by ones and twos from the doors of the 
 plain, large buildings of the Church Family, 
 and entered the plain, small church-house, 
 the Sisters in their straight drab gowns and 
 stiff, wire -framed gauze caps, which hid 
 their hair, and the Brothers in their severe 
 suits of grey or brown, their formless trousers 
 and buttonless coats of Quaker cut, and their 
 straggling locks falling to their necks under 
 their wide-brimmed hats without ribbons. 
 They had set, serious faces, and the little 
 children who paced gravely along beside 
 them the boys with the men, and the girls 
 with the women had faces set and serious 
 as their elders. It was all so still, in the
 
 IQ2 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 glisten of the morning sun, with those 
 figures tending noiselessly towards one 
 point, that it was like a vision, and they 
 were like spirits. 
 
 Within the church-house they took their 
 places in rows, fronting one another the 
 men on one side and the women on the other ; 
 the children were divided, the boys from 
 the girls ; and as the neighbour-folk began 
 to come in from the outside, they were as- 
 sorted in like manner. Among the strangers 
 there were some fashionably dressed people 
 from a summer resort not far away ; they 
 had come in carriages, which they had left 
 standing in the care of their coachmen along 
 the street ; but they had left the rule of 
 their world there, too, and conformed to the 
 Shaker custom in the Shaker church. 
 
 It was some time after the last comer was 
 seated before the Brothers or Sisters made 
 any sign of life. Then one of the Sisters 
 began to sing, and presently they all joined 
 her, the men as well as the women, and 
 softly beat time to their singing on the 
 broad napkins stretched across their knees. 
 When the singing was over, one and another 
 spoke briefly upon any serious thing he or 
 she had in mind. Presently, they all rose 
 and put back their seats against the wall,
 
 A PASTING AND A MEETING. 1 93 
 
 and, in the space left free, they formed 
 themselves into two irregular circles, and 
 began a brisk march, while they kept time 
 to their chant with a certain joyous gesticu- 
 lation. The air had a musical law of its 
 own, with strange and abrupt changes of 
 time, and it ceased with a close as sudden 
 as any of the changes ; the dance dissolved ; 
 the Brothers went back to their seats against 
 one wall, and the Sisters to theirs against the 
 other. 
 
 The Shakers of all ages shared in this 
 rhythmical march. One weighty Sister, 
 indeed, seemed to be excused from it ; she 
 sat still, and kept time with her hands to 
 the tune which her feet might not follow 
 with her vast bulk. But she was alone in 
 her exemption ; the youngest of the little 
 wards of the family obeyed the music with 
 the same joy and the same tottering step as 
 the tall old man who led the rest in the 
 mystic round. He stooped a little, but his 
 downward face had the beauty of feature 
 which age refines rather than wastes, and 
 the perfect silver of his hair falling to his 
 throat gave his face a patriarchal dignity. 
 His hands wavered like his feet ; he did not 
 always reach the close of a bar with the rest 
 of the singers ; a rapture, which was like a 
 
 N
 
 194 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 remembered rapture, appeared through the 
 fatigue which his countenance expressed. 
 
 When the Brethren and Sisters were 
 again still in their places, an elderly Brother 
 came forward and delivered a brief homily, 
 mainly directed against the natural pro- 
 pensities in all kinds, but bearing somewhat 
 more severely upon the tea-habit among 
 women, and admonishing all his hearers of 
 the evil consequences of so much hot, un- 
 leavened bread as he assumed they were in 
 the custom of eating. 
 
 He sat down, and another elderly Brother 
 rose and said : " The meeting is dismissed."
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 195 
 
 XL 
 
 THE strangers from the world-outside 
 quickly dispersed, until none remained 
 except a young girl and an old lady of those 
 who had driven over from the summer resort, 
 and who lingered until most of the Brothers 
 and Sisters had gone, too. Certain of the 
 younger and stronger Shakeresses had stayed 
 to help out that weighty Sister who had not 
 joined in the dance, and there was a kindly- 
 looking Brother who was waiting for them 
 to get her away before he shut the windows 
 and closed the door. When he came back 
 into the church-house, after giving a hand 
 with the Sister down the steps, he found the 
 old lady and the young girl, who was fret- 
 ting, with a very young girl's fear of in- 
 decorum : "What can you want to say to 
 him, grandmamma ? Do come on ! " 
 
 The old lady, who was something like a 
 young girl, too, in a ghostly fashion, and had 
 that grace of figure and carriage which often 
 outlasts youth, would not be bidden. She
 
 196 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 moved up to the Brother and asked : " Was 
 that very old man who led in the marching 
 Roger Burton ? " 
 
 " Yee. Father Burton we call him. He 
 always leads," said the Brother, with the 
 pride and pleasure humanity feels in the 
 power of any of the race to hold out against 
 time. " On towards ninety now, too ! " 
 
 "I should like to speak with him," said 
 the old lady, and at this the young girl 
 seemed arrested in another protest by pure 
 astonishment. " I must ! " 
 
 "Oh nay," returned the Shaker, with a 
 smile of compassion for the absurdity. 
 "He 's too old for that ! " 
 
 "I must!" the old lady repeated; and 
 she urged, as if it were a reason : "I used 
 to know him before he joined the Shakers. 
 I have got to see him ! " 
 
 The Shaker Brother faltered, with his 
 hand on the door, which he could not close 
 because she gave no sign of moving from the 
 doorway either for his purpose or for the 
 impatience of the young lady, who now 
 stood at the foot of the steps outside, prod- 
 ding the turf with the point of her parasol. 
 He looked out of the doorway, and, to his 
 apparent great relief, he caught sight of the 
 elder who had preached at the meeting. He
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 197 
 
 was going by the church-house, and he 
 stopped a little at sight of the group by the 
 doorway. 
 
 "Alfred," the Brother called to him, 
 " here is a friend says that she has got to 
 see Father Burton ! "
 
 198 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 XII. 
 
 fTlHE elder drew near and looked first at 
 -L the young lady, who rejected the in- 
 quiry of his glance, and then at the old lady, 
 who said eagerly : "I used to know him 
 when I was a girl, before he joined the 
 Shakers, and I live a great ways from here 
 now I live in St. Louis. I guess if I 'm not 
 too old, Roger isn't ; and I don't believe but 
 what he '11 know me. " She smiled brightly, 
 the elder may have felt her apparitional 
 charm. 
 
 " I don't know what to say, exactly. It 's 
 not our custom to refuse speech with friends 
 from the world-outside. But Father Burton 
 is very old. I question if he '11 know you." 
 
 " I guess he '11 know me," said the old 
 lady. 
 
 "As long as you've come such a great 
 
 way, I don't see as we should do right 
 
 There ! It won't do him any hurt, I guess. 
 You can go into the office, and I '11 bring 
 him to you, if he isn't too tired." He
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 1 99 
 
 pointed towards a building a little way 
 down the street. " That 's the " 
 
 "Oh, I guess I know where the office is 
 well enough," chirped the old lady, and she 
 gave a little laugh of triumph. 
 
 She sat alone in the office parlour, when 
 the elder came in with Father Burton ; her 
 granddaughter, as if anything were better 
 than staying through the reminiscences of 
 the old people when they should come 
 together, said she would go and sit in the 
 carriage until her grandmother was ready. 
 An office Sister, somewhat excited by the 
 prospect of Father Burton's coming inter- 
 view with this old lady who had insisted 
 upon seeing him, remained with her. 
 
 " He don't seem very well," said Elder 
 Alfred, when he came in with the old man ; 
 "but his hearing is about as good as ever it 
 was, and I don't believe you '11 have to talk 
 any too loud to him. His mind comes and 
 goes a little, and you have got to look out 
 for that." 
 
 He advanced these cautions, and then, as 
 if he had no further concern in the matter, 
 he left his charge, in the care of the office 
 Sister, to the old lady.
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 SHE had ignored his going. She seized 
 one of Father Burton's trembling hands 
 in hers before he could drop into the easy- 
 chair the Sister pulled up for him. 
 
 "Roger Burton!" she cried out, "don't 
 you know me ? " 
 
 "Nay," said the old man. 
 
 "Why, I'm Chloe Chloe Mason, that 
 was I" 
 
 " Yee," said the old man, with the effect 
 of yielding so much, at least, and he looked 
 at the Sister for further light on the point. 
 He sank into the chair behind him, and the 
 old lady drew hers up beside him, still 
 keeping his hand and talking to him. 
 
 " I wanted to see you again, Roger, before 
 we both passed away. I didn't believe you 
 were living yet ; but I happened to get hold 
 of a paper that had a letter in it about a 
 visit to the Family here, and it spoke of 
 you ; and nothing would do but I must 
 start right on. I guess they thought I was
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 2OI 
 
 crazy, but they had to let me come. They 
 were coming to the seaside anyway, and I 
 just made them stop off at Egerton over 
 Sunday, and let me come here and see you 
 once more before you died, Roger." She 
 gave a laugh and smoothed his hand between 
 hers. 
 
 Father Burton had been working his 
 toothless jaws together nervously, as old 
 men do. Now he leaned forward, and, with 
 a frown of his thick, senile brows, he said : 
 "Chloe Mason that used to live at Birch- 
 field when I taught the academy there?" 
 
 "Yes ! " crowed the old lady. "I knew 
 you would remember me ! I saw it was 
 you the minute I set eyes on you in the 
 march. You a'n't changed a bit, hardly; 
 you Ve aged some ; we all have ; and I can 
 see your teeth are gone a good deal, they 've 
 got to go ; but your nose is just the same, 
 and your eyes, and your hair ; it 's whiter, 
 of course, but it was always so light-coloured. 
 You Ve got beautiful hair, Roger ! " 
 
 "Let me see," said the old man. "She 
 was the one that married Ira Dickerman, 
 wa'n't she ? " He bent his frown upon her 
 again, and began to work his lips while he 
 waited her answer. 
 
 "I don't hardly believe he knows what
 
 202 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 you are talkin' about," said the Sister 
 softly. 
 
 "Yes, he does," rejoined the old lady, 
 with the sharpness of one who will not 
 suffer a friend to be criticised. " He knows 
 it as well as I do. Don't you know it 's 
 Chloe talking to you, Roger ? " 
 
 " Oh yee," he returned in a tone of dry 
 unconcern. 
 
 "There, I told you he did," said the old 
 lady. She turned again to the old man. 
 "Yes, I married Ira about a year after- 
 wards. He made me a good husband, Ira 
 did ; I '11 never say anything against Ira. 
 He was a master provider, and he looked 
 out for everything. He was pretty fore- 
 handed before we left Birchfield in '33, and 
 out west everything seemed to turn into 
 money. He gave up the law, well, I sup- 
 pose, as much as thirty years before he died, 
 and didn't do anything but look after his 
 property ; he lent money some. He died in 
 '56; it's a good while ago, but he outlived 
 all our boys ; there was five of them ; and 
 the two girls were married and had families 
 of their own by that time. I 've got one of 
 my granddaughters here with me." She 
 looked round for the girl, and then went on : 
 " I guess she 's gone out somewhere ; she '11
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 2O3 
 
 be back again. I want you to see her. 
 She 's Ira all over ; more than any of his 
 own children were ; they took after me 
 mostly. He always said he was glad of 
 that. He was very good to me, Ira was ; 
 and I didn't have anything to complain of. 
 None of my children ever made me shed a 
 tear as long as they lived. But, oh dear 
 me ! Life a'n't what we used to think it 
 was, Roger, when we were young. It was 
 all bright enough for me till we came here 
 that day together. But, there ! I haven't 
 ever blamed you, and I wouldn't let them 
 no, not the first syllable ! Grandfather was 
 pretty mad that afternoon, when I came 
 home alone. * Why, is the fellow crazy ? ' 
 said he. 'Don't you say a word against 
 Roger, grandfather,' said I, and then I fell 
 right out of the chaise. Well, I got over it 
 we get over almost everything in this 
 world and I went back home as soon as I 
 was able ; and then, after a while, Ira began 
 to come round. First it did seem as if I 
 couldn't bear to look at him; and if it 
 
 hadn't been for my pride " 
 
 The old man paused from chewing upon 
 nothing, and turned his dim eyes upon her 
 again : " Do I understand that you are 
 Chloe Mason that was Squire Pullen's 
 daughter ? "
 
 2O4 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 "Granddaughter," the old lady corrected 
 him. "There," she said to the Sister, "I 
 told you ! Yes, I 'm Chloe, Roger ; and I 
 haven't ever had one hard feeling against 
 you. You did it because you felt that it 
 was right, and you always were a great 
 hand to do what you thought was right. I 
 tried to express it at the time, but I don't 
 know as I did. I presume you couldn't 
 understand how I felt, although I didn't 
 pass any judgment on you. My ! oh my ! 
 How it all comes back to me ! I was right 
 here, in this very place, with Candace and 
 the other office Sisters I guess they can't 
 any of them be living now and you came 
 in after you 'd been with Elder Lindsley, 
 and you looked so strange I wanted to 
 laugh ; I thought you were scared because 
 you 'd stayed so long. But I guess I didn't 
 want to laugh after we got started on the 
 way home, and you began to tell me how 
 you felt, and asked me to join the Shakers 
 with you. First I thought you must be 
 joking, and then I thought you must have 
 taken leave of your senses ; and when I 
 found out you meant it, I didn't know what 
 to think. It hurt me, Roger, more than a 
 man could ever understand. It made me 
 feel as if 1 was draggin' you down, and if I
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 2O5 
 
 couldn't see it as you did, I was kind of 
 well low-minded ; I don't express it very 
 well now, and I couldn't begin to express it 
 then. But it made it seem as if everything 
 that we had thought so beautiful and lovely 
 was disgraceful, somehow. And all the 
 while I knew, just as well as I know now, 
 that it iva'n't ; but I didn't know how to say 
 so ; and I felt as if you were putting the 
 whole burden on me, and I couldn't bear it. 
 When I saw that you really meant it, all 
 I wanted was to get you out of my sight. I 
 didn't blame you, and I didn't hate you ; I 
 don't know as I can explain it, but it seemed 
 as if I should go crazy the next minute if 
 you stayed with me and tried to talk with 
 me, and I couldn't tell you how I felt and 
 I couldn't. That was what made me make 
 you get out of the chaise right off. I used 
 to turn over what you did, and turn it over, 
 and try to think whether I had done right 
 or not ; and whether I couldn't have made 
 you see it as I did, if I'd tried. But you 
 know I couldn't try, don't you, Roger? You 
 know how it is when we've lost friends 
 how you go back to this point and that, and 
 try to patch up some way they would have 
 lived, if you had done so-and-so? Well, it 
 was just like that ! But, afterwards, I was
 
 206 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 glad I hadn't tried to persuade you, or even 
 let you go home to grandfather's and talk it 
 over with him. It wouldn't have been any 
 use, and I was spared that much, anyway." 
 
 The old man did not answer anything, and 
 the Sister murmured : "I guess you '11 have 
 to speak a little louder to him." 
 
 He roused himself and turned towards the 
 old lady. "Did you come from Squire 
 Pullen's now ? " he asked. 
 
 She laughed. "Grandfather's? Why, 
 he 's been dead fifty years ! That 's like 
 you, Roger ! Just so absent-minded ! Have 
 you kept on here in the Family, living in a 
 kind of waking dream as you used to ? " 
 
 "I guess so," said the old man, with an 
 air of fatigue. 
 
 "I guess he's beginning to get tired," the 
 Sister hinted. 
 
 The old lady did not heed her. "Well, 
 life 's a dream, whether you take it sleeping 
 or waking, it don't matter much which way 
 you take it ; and I guess you got as much 
 good out of it your way as any. I 've had 
 dreams by night that are a good deal more 
 like real things to me than the things that 
 really happened. Don't it seem like a dream 
 to you, our ever coming here together ? " 
 
 " Yee," said the old man indifferently.
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 2O7 
 
 " But you remember it, don't you, Roger ? " 
 she entreated. 
 
 "Yee. I came here with a young woman 
 I was engaged to be married to." 
 
 "Well, I was the one ! Don't you know 
 me? I'mChloe!" 
 
 " Why, so you are ! Why, you 're Chloe ! 
 Yee, yee, I know you now. But first 
 off " 
 
 "Yes; I don't wonder. It's more than 
 sixty years ago. I '11 be eighty next August, 
 and I was eighteen then. " 
 
 "And what did you say we came here 
 for?" He sank his voice to a confidential 
 whisper. 
 
 "Just to see the place ! And you liked it 
 so much you wanted to stay, and I let you. 
 You remember about that ? " The old man 
 shook his head. " Yes, you do ! You re- 
 member me ? Chloe ? " He shook his head 
 again. She gave a little cry of grief and 
 reproach. " You did, a minute ago ! " 
 
 "I guess he's getting pretty tired," said 
 the Sister more boldly. 
 
 " Tired ?'" the word seemed to vex him. 
 "If you Sisters would leave my bed the 
 way I fix it myself, and not meddle with it 
 afterwards, I shouldn't get so tired fixing it 
 over again, and I should be much obliged to
 
 2O8 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 you." He turned to Chloe and explained, 
 "They know as well as anybody that I like 
 to have a hollow down the middle, so as to 
 keep me from rolling from side to side ; but 
 they will flatten it out. What did you say 
 became of the girl ? " 
 
 4 'What girl?" 
 
 "The one he came here with." 
 
 "Why, I'm the one, and you're Koger, 
 that she came with." 
 
 *'Yee; I'm Roger," said the old man, 
 after a moment's reflection. ' ' But I thought 
 she was young " 
 
 The old lady gave a gay laugh: "Well, 
 / was young, too, when I came here with 
 you." 
 
 " Ah, just so ! " said the old man. 
 
 She waited for him to speak further ; but 
 he did not, and she said compassionately : 
 " We a'n't either of us as young as we were." 
 
 "I was as spry as anybody till I had the 
 rheumatism," he remarked vaguely. He 
 lifted his head and stopped working his 
 jaws, and looked at her with eyes that again 
 had a gleam of recognition in them. "And 
 you say she made out pretty well?" 
 
 "Yes," returned the old lady, "I don't 
 know as I ever had a thing happen to me 
 that he could have helped. He was always
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 2OQ 
 
 just so to me. We had a pretty large family 
 of children, as I was Baying just now, and 
 we lost most of them. That was what hurt 
 the most, I guess ; it 'most killed him to 
 have them go. But the two girls married 
 well, and their husbands are both good men, 
 and they 've got pretty children, and if I was 
 two grandmothers it would be all right ; then 
 they could both have me with them." She 
 smiled fondly, proudly ; and then her face 
 sobered again. " Yes, I 've been through it 
 all, Roger. I've had the best that earth 
 could give, and I 've seen my children round 
 me, and now my grandchildren ; and yet I 
 don't know, Roger, but what I 'd have done 
 as well to stay here with you that day. 
 What do you think ? " She leaned forward 
 and took his old hand again between her 
 aged palms, and softly caressed it. ' ' You 've 
 been here ever since, and you've lived 
 the angelic life, and you've had peace. 
 You Ve escaped all the troubles of this world. 
 You haven't had a wife to pester you ; and 
 you haven't had to go down into the grave 
 with your children, and want to stay there 
 with them, when they died before you. You 
 haven't seen your partner die by inches before 
 your eyes. Your days have flowed right on 
 here, with no sorrow and no trouble ; you 've
 
 210 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 done what you thought was right, and you 've 
 had your reward. Do you think I 'd better 
 have stayed with you that day ? " 
 
 The question, the caressing touch, appar- 
 ently brightened him into consciousness of 
 her again. He laughed, as if it all affected 
 him humorously. " Yee, I 've lived the 
 angelic life, as you say, and it 's been all I 
 ever expected. I've had peace, I don't 
 deny that, and I haven't had any sorrow or 
 trouble ; and still, I 'm not sure but I 'd 
 have done about as well to go with you, 
 Chloe." 
 
 He lifted his countenance upon her for a 
 moment of full recognition. In the next he 
 lost her. His face darkened, and he asked : 
 " Do you know any of the Sisters in the 
 Family house over there ? " 
 
 " I used to know them," the old lady re- 
 turned tremulously, " when I was a little 
 girl." 
 
 " Well," said the old man, and he got 
 stiffly to his feet, " I want you to tell them 
 that if they smooth out that hollow in my 
 bed "
 
 A PARTING AND A MEETING. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 FT! HE young girl showed her impatient face 
 JL at the doorway, and asked : " Isn't it 
 almost time for us to be going, grand- 
 mother ? " 
 
 " Yes, it 's time," said the old lady. " I 
 guess Roger and I have about got through."
 
 This book is DUE on the last 
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