part I think she was something far better than either, and far more

sensible."

This was a speech so characteristic that it brought me to tears and smiles together.

To-night Cousin Mehitable came to the point of her errand with customary directness.

"I came down," she said, "to see how soon you expect to arrange to live with me."

"I hadn't expected anything about it," I returned.

"Of course you would keep the house," she went on, entirely disregarding my feeble protest. "You might want to come back summers sometimes. This summer I'm going to take you to Europe."

I am too much accustomed to her habit of planning things to be taken entirely by surprise; but it did rather take my breath away to find my future so completely disposed of. I felt almost as if I were not even to have a chance to protest.

"But I never thought of giving up the house," I managed to say.

"Of course not; why should you?" she returned briskly. "You have money enough to keep up the place and live where you please. Don't I know that for this ten years you and Aunt Martha haven't spent half your income? Keep it, of course; for, as I say, sometimes you may like to come back for old times' sake."

I could only stare at her, and laugh.

"Oh, you laugh, Ruth," Cousin Mehitable remarked, more forcibly than ever, "but you ought to understand that I've taken charge of you. We are all that are left of the family now, and I'm the head of it. You are a foolish thing anyway, and let everybody impose on your good-nature. You need somebody to look after you. If I'd had you in charge, you'd never have got tangled up in that foolish engagement. I'm glad you had the sense to break it."

I felt as if she had given me a blow in the face, but I could not answer.

"Don't blush like that," Cousin Mehitable commanded. "It's all over, and you know I always said you were a fool to marry a country lawyer."

"Father was a country lawyer," I retorted.

"Fudge! Cousin Horace was a judge and a man whose writings had given him a wide reputation. Don't outrage his memory by calling him a rustic. For my part I never had any patience with him for burying himself in the country like a clodhopper."

"You forget that Mother's health"--I began; but with Cousin Mehitable one is never sure of being allowed to complete a sentence.

"Oh, yes," she interrupted, "of course I forgot. Well, if there could be an excuse, Aunt Martha would serve for excusing anything. I beg your pardon, Ruth. But now all that is past and gone, and fortunately the family is still well enough remembered in Boston for you to take up life there with very little trouble. That's what I had in mind ten years ago, when I insisted on your coming out."

"People who saw me then will hardly remember me."

"The folks that knew your father and mother," she went on serenely, "are of course old people like me; but they will help you to know the younger generation. Besides, those you know will not have forgotten you. A Privet is not so easily forgotten, and you were an uncommonly pretty bud, Ruth. What a fool you were not to marry Hugh Colet! You always were a fool."

Cousin Mehitable generally tempers a compliment in this manner, and it prevents me from being too much elated by her praise.

She was interrupted here by the necessity of going to prepare for supper. Miss Charlotte did not come over to-day, so we were alone together. No sooner were we seated at the supper-table than she returned to the attack.

"When you live in Boston," she said, "I shall"--

"Suppose I should not live in Boston?" I interrupted.

"But you will. What else should you do?"

"I might go on living here."

"Living here!" she cried out explosively. "You don't call this living, do you? How long is it since you heard any music, or saw a picture, or went to the theatre, or had any society?"

I was forced to confess that music and painting and acting were all entirely lacking in Tuskamuck; but I remarked that I had all the books that attracted me, and I protested against her saying I hadn't any society.

"Oh, you see human beings now and then," Cousin Mehitable observed coolly; "and I dare say they are very worthy creatures. But you know yourself they are not society. You haven't forgotten the year I brought you out."

I have not forgotten it, of course; and I cannot deny that when I think of that winter in Boston, the year I was nineteen, I do feel a little mournful sometimes. It was all so delightful, and it is all so far away now. I hardly heard what Cousin Mehitable said next. I was thinking how enchanting a home in Boston would be, and how completely alone as for family I am. Cousin Mehitable is the only near relative I have in the world, and why should I not be with her? It would be delightful. Perhaps I may manage to get in a week or two in town now and then; but I cannot go away for long. There would be nobody to start the reading-room, or keep up the Shakespeare Club; and what would become of Kathie and Peggy Cole, or of all that dreadful Spearin tribe? I dare say I am too proud of my consequence, and that if I went away somebody would be found to look after things. Still I know I am useful here; and it seems to me I am really needed. Besides, I love the place and the people, and I think my friends love me.

March 23. Cousin Mehitable went home to-day. Easter is at hand, and she has a bonnet from Paris,--"a perfect dream of a bonnet," she said with the enthusiasm of a girl, "dove-colored velvet, and violets, and steel beads, and two or three white ostrich tips; a bonnet an angel couldn't resist, Ruth!"--and this bonnet must form part of the church service on Easter. The connection between Paris bonnets and the proper observance of the day is not clear in my mind; but when I said something of this sort to Cousin Mehitable she rebuked me with great gravity.

"Ruth, there is nothing in worse form than making jokes about sacred subjects."

"Your bonnet isn't sacred," I retorted, for I cannot resist sometimes the temptation to tease her; "or at least it can't be till it's been to church on Easter."

"You know what I mean," was her answer. "When you live with me I shall insist upon your speaking respectfully of the church."

"I wasn't speaking of the church," I persisted, laughing at the gravity with which she always takes up its defense; "I was speaking of your bonnet, your Paris bonnet, your Easter bonnet, your ecclesiastical, frivolous, giddy, girlish bonnet."

"Oh, you may think it too young for me," she said eagerly, forgetting the church in her excitement, "but it isn't really. It's as modest and appropriate as anything you ever saw; and so becoming and _chic_!"

"Oh, I can always trust your taste, Cousin Mehitable," I told her, "but you know you're a worldly old thing. You'd insist upon having your angelic robes fitted by a fashionable tailor."

Again she looked grave and shocked in a flash.

"How can you, Ruth! You are a worse heathen than ever. But then there is no church in Tuskamuck, so I suppose it is not to be wondered at. That's another reason for taking you away from this wilderness."

"There are two churches, as you know very well," I said.

"Nonsense! They're only meeting-houses,--conventicles. However, when you come to Boston to live, we will see."

"I told you last night that I shouldn't give up Tuskamuck."

"I know you did, but I didn't mind that. You must give it up."

She went away insisting upon this, and refusing to accept any other decision. I did so far yield as to promise provisionally that I would go abroad with her this summer. I need to see the world with a broader view again, and I shall enjoy it. To think of the picture galleries fills me with joy already. I should be willing to cross the Atlantic just to see once more the enchanting tailor of Moroni's in the National Gallery. It is odd, it comes into my mind at this moment that he looks something like Tom Webbe, or Tom looks something like him. Very likely it is all nonsense. Yes; I will go for the summer--to leave here altogether--no, that is not to be thought of.

March 24. The whole town is excited over an accident up at the lake this morning. A man and his son were drowned by breaking through the ice. They had been up to some of the logging camps, and it is said they were not sober. They were Brownrigs, and part of the family in the little red house. The mother and the daughter are left. I hope it is not heartless to hate to think of them. I have no doubt that they suffer like others; only it is not likely folk of this sort are as sensitive as we are. It is a mercy that they are not.

March 25. The Brownrig family seems just now to be forced upon my attention, and that in no pleasant way.

Aunt Naomi came in this forenoon, and seated herself with an air of mysterious importance. She looked at me with her keen eyes, penetrating and humorous even when she is most serious, and seemed to be examining me to discover what I was thinking. It was evident at once that she had news. This is generally true, for she seems always to have something to tell. Her mind gathers news as salt gathers moisture, and her greatest pleasure is to impart what she has heard. She has generally with me the air of being a little uncertain how I may receive her tidings. Like all persons of strong mind and a sense of humor, she is by nature in sympathy with the habit of looking at life frankly and dispassionately, and I believe that secretly and only half consciously she envies me my mental freedom. Sometimes I have suspected her of leading me on to say things which she would have felt it wrong to say herself because they are unorthodox, but which she has too much common sense not to sympathize with. She is convinced, though, that such freedom of thought as mine is wrong, and she nobly deprives herself of the pleasure of being frank in her thoughts when this would involve any reflection upon the theological conventions which are her rule of life. She gratifies a lively mind by feeding it on scraps of gossip and commenting on them in her pungent way; she is never unkind in her thought, I am sure, but she does sometimes say sharp things. Like Lady Teazle, however, she abuses people out of pure good nature. I looked at her this morning as she sat swinging her foot and munching--there is no other word for it!--her green barège veil, and I wondered, as I have often wondered before, how a woman really so clever could be content to pass so much of her time in the gathering and circulating of mere trivialities. I suppose that it is because there is so little in the village to appeal to the intellectual side of her, and her mind must be occupied. She might be a brilliant woman in a wider sphere. Now she seems something like a beaver in captivity, building dams of hairbrushes and boots on a carpeted floor.

I confess, too, that I wondered, as I looked at her, if she represented my future. I thought of Cousin Mehitable's doleful predictions of what I should come to if I stay in Tuskamuck, and I tried to decide whether I should come in time to be like Aunt Naomi, a general carrier of news from house to house, an old maid aunt to the whole village, with no real kindred, and with no interests wider than those of village gossip. I cannot believe it, but I suppose at my age she would not have believed it of herself.

"We're really getting to be quite like a city," Aunt Naomi said, with a grimness which showed me there was something important behind this enigmatic remark.

"Are we?" I responded. "I confess I don't see how."

"Humph!" she sniffed. "There's wickedness here that isn't generally looked for outside of the city."

"Oh, wickedness!" I said. "There is plenty of that everywhere, I suppose; but I never have thought we have more than our share of it."

She wagged her foot more violently, and had what might have seemed a considerable lunch on her green veil before she spoke again--though it is wicked for me to make fun of her. Then she took a fresh start.

"What are you knitting?" she asked.

"What started in January to be some mittens for the Turner boy. He brings our milk, and he never seems to have mittens enough."

"I don't wonder much," was her comment. "His mother has so many babies that she can't be expected to take care of them."

"Poor Mrs. Turner," I said. "I should think the poor thing would be discouraged. I am ashamed that I don't do more for her."

"I don't see that you are called upon to take care of all the poor in the town; but if you could stop her increasing her family it'd be the best thing you could do."

When Aunt Naomi makes a remark like this, I feel it is discreet to change the subject.

"I hope that now the weather is getting milder," I observed, "you are not so cold in prayer-meetings."

She was not diverted, even by this chance to dwell on her pet grievance, but went her own way.

"I suppose you'll feel now you've got to look out for that Brownrig girl, too," she said.

"That Brownrig girl?" I repeated.

I tried not to show it, but the blood rushed to my heart and made me faint. I realized something terrible was coming, though I had nothing to go upon but the old gossip about Tom and the fact that I had seen him come from the red house.

"Her sin has found her out," returned Aunt Naomi with indignant emphasis. "For my part, I don't see what such creatures are allowed to live for. Think what kind of a mother she will make. They'd better take her and her baby and drown 'em along with her father and brother."

"Aunt Naomi!" was all I could say.

"Well, I suppose you think I'm not very charitable, but it does make me mad to see that sort of trash"--

"I don't know what you are talking about," I interrupted. "Has the Brownrig girl a child?"

"No; but she's going to have. Her mother's gone off and left her, and she's down sick with pneumonia besides."

"Her mother has gone off?"

"Yes; and it'd be good riddance, if there was anybody to take care of the girl."

It is useless to ask Aunt Naomi how she knows all that goes on in the town. She collects news from the air, I believe. I reflected that she is not always right, and I hoped now she might be mistaken.

"But somebody must be with her if she's down with pneumonia," I said.

"Yes; that old Bagley woman's there. The Overseers of the Poor sent her, but she's about twice as bad as nobody, I should think. If I was sick, and she came round, I know I'd ask her to go away, and let me die in peace."

It was evident enough that Aunt Naomi was a good deal stirred up, but I did not dare to ask her why. If there is anything worse behind this scandal, I had rather not know it. We were fortunately interrupted, and Aunt Naomi went soon, so I heard no more. I was sick with the loathsomeness of having Tom Webbe connected in my thought with that wretched girl, and I do hope that it is only my foolishness. He cannot have fallen to such depths.

March 27. I have heard no more from the Brownrigs, and I must hope things were somehow not as Aunt Naomi thought. To-day I learned that she is shut up with a cold. I must go in to-morrow and see her. Miss Charlotte is a great comfort. The dear old soul begins really to look better, and the thinness about her lips is yielding to good feeding. She tells me stories of the old people of the town whom I can just remember, and she is full of reverence for both Father and Mother. Of course I never talk theology with her, but I am surprised sometimes to find that under the shell of her orthodoxy is a good deal of liberalism. I suppose any kindly mortal who accepted the old creeds made allowances for those nearest and dearest, and human nature will always make allowances for itself. I should think that an imaginative belief in a creed, a belief that realized the cruelty of theology, must either drive one mad or make one disbelieve from simple horror. Nobody but a savage could worship a relentless god and not become insane from the horror of being in the clutch of an implacable power.

March 28. I have had a most painful visit from Deacon Webbe. He came in looking so gray and old that it shocked me to see him. He shook hands as if he did not know what he was doing, and then sat down in a dazed way, slowly twirling his hat and fixing his eyes on it as if he were blind. I tried to say something, but only stumbled on in little commonplaces about the weather, to which he paid so little attention that it was evident he had no idea what I was saying. In a minute or two I was reduced to silence. One cannot go on saying mechanical nothings in the face of suffering, and it was impossible not to see that Deacon Webbe was in grievous pain.

"Deacon Webbe," I said at last, when I could not bear the silence any longer, "what is the matter?"

He raised his eyes to mine with a look of pitiful helplessness.

"I've no right to come to you, Miss Ruth," he said in his slow way, "but there's nobody else, and you always were Tom's friend."

"Tom?" I repeated. "What has happened?"

"It isn't a thing to talk to a woman about," he went on, "and you'll have to excuse me, Miss Ruth. I'm sure you will. It's that Brownrig girl."

I sat silent, and I felt my hands growing cold.

"She's had a baby," he said after a moment.

The simple bald fact was horrible as he said it. I could not speak, and after a little hesitation he continued in a tone so low I could scarcely hear him.

"It's his. Think of the shame of it and the sin of it. It seems to me, if it could only have been the Lord's will, I would have been glad to die rather than to have this happen. My son!"

The wail of his voice went to my heart and made me shiver. I would have given anything I possessed to comfort him, but what could I say? Shame is worse than death. When one dies you can at least speak of the happiness that has been and the consolation of the memory of this. In disgrace whatever has been good before makes the shame only the harder to bear. What could I say to a father mourning the sin and the disgrace of his only son?

It seemed to me a long time that we sat there silent. At last he said:--

"I didn't come just to make you feel bad, Miss Ruth. I want you to tell me what I ought to do, what I can do. I ought to do something to help the girl. Bad as she is, she's sick, and she's a woman. I don't know where Tom is, and I'm that baby's grandfather." His voice choked, but he went on. "Of course I ought not to trouble you, but I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do. My wife"--

The poor old man stopped. He is not polished, but he has the instinct of a good man to screen his wife, and plainly was afraid he might say something which would seem to reflect on her.

"My wife," he said, evidently changing the form of his words, "is dreadfully put out, as she naturally would be, and of course I don't like to talk much with her about it. I thought you might help me, Miss Ruth."

Never in my life have I felt more helpless. I tried to think clearly, but the only thing I could do was to try to comfort him. I have no remembrance of what I said, and I believe it made very little difference. What he wanted was sympathy. I had no counsel to give, but I think I sent Deacon Daniel away somewhat comforted. I could only advise him to wait and see what was needed. He of course must have thought of this himself, but he liked to have me agree with him and be good to him. He will do his duty, and what is more he will do his best, but he will do it with very little help from Mrs. Webbe, I am afraid. Poor Deacon Daniel! I could have put my arms round his neck and kissed his weather-beaten cheek, but he would not have understood. I suppose he would have been frightened half out of his wits, and very likely would have thought that I had suddenly gone mad. It is so hard to comfort a slow-minded person; he cannot see what you mean by a caress. Yet I hope that Deacon Daniel went away somewhat heartened. Oh, if Tom could only realize the sorrow I saw in his father's eyes, I think he would have his punishment.

March 29. When Deacon Webbe said last night that he did not know where Tom was, I thought for just a moment of the sealed address Tom left me. I was so taken up with pity, however, that the thought passed from my mind. After the Deacon was gone I wondered whether I should have spoken of the letter; but it seemed to me that it was better to have said nothing. I thought I should open it before saying anything; and I needed to consider whether the time had come when I was justified in reading it. Tom trusted me, and I was bound by that; yet surely he ought to be told the state of things. It was imperative that he should know about the poor girl. I have never been able to be sure why he did not let his family know where he was, but I fear he may have quarreled with them. Now he must be told. Oh, it is such wretched business, so sad and dreadful!

I went upstairs after thinking by the fire until it had burned to embers, and indeed until the very ashes were cold. I took out Tom's letter, and for a moment I was half sick at the thought that he had degraded himself so. It seemed almost as if in holding his letter I was touching her, and I would gladly have thrown it in the fire unopened. Then I was ashamed to be so squeamish and so uncharitable, and realized how foolish I was. The sealed envelope had in it a card with Tom's address in New York, and this note:--

"If you open this it must mean that you know. I have nothing to say in my own defense that you could understand; only this is true, Ruth: I have never really cared for any woman in the world but you. You will not believe it, and you will not be likely to find it very easy to forgive me for saying it now, but it is true. I never knew better how completely you have possession of me than I do just at this moment, when I know I am writing what you will read hating me. No, I suppose you can't really hate anybody; but you must despise me, and it is an insult for me to say I love you. But I have loved you all my life, and I cannot help it. I shall go on till I die, even if you do not speak to me again in my whole life. Do not make me come home unless I must. Forgive me, if you can."

The note had neither end nor beginning. I was so overcome by it all, by the pity of it, that I could not trust myself to think. I sat down and wrote to Tom just this message, without salutation or signature:--

"Your father has been here to see me. The Brownrig girl is ill of pneumonia. Her baby was born night before last, and is alive."

I sent this off to-day. What he will do I cannot tell. I cannot even be sure what he ought to do, and I had no right to urge him to come or to stay away. Certainly for him to marry that outcast creature seems impossible; but if he does not the baby must go through life with a brand of shame on her. The world is so cruel to illegitimate children! Perhaps it has to be; at least Father believed that the only preservation of society lay in this severity; but I am a woman, and I think of the children, who are not to blame. Things are so tangled up in human relations that one thread cannot be drawn taut without bringing about tragedies on other lines.

Yet to marry this girl--Oh, it is not possible! To think of Tom Webbe's living in the same house with that dreadful creature, of his having it known that he had married such a woman--

It is horrible, whichever way I look at it. I cannot be kind in my thoughts to one of them without being cruel to the other. I am so thankful that I have not to decide. I know I should be too weak to be just, and then I should be always unhappy at the wrong I had done. Now, whatever I was called upon to take the responsibility of was done when I had written to Tom.

IV

APRIL

April 1. When a new month comes in it always seems as if something should happen. The divisions of time do not appeal to the feelings as simple arbitrary conveniences, but as real endings and beginnings; so the fancy demands that the old order shall end and some better, new fashion begin. I suppose everybody has had the vague sense of disappointment that the new month or the new year is so like the one before. I used to feel this very strongly as a child, though never unhappily. It was a disappointment, but as all times were happy times, the disappointment was not bitter. The thought is in my mind to-night because I am troubled, and because I would so gladly leave the fret and worry behind, to begin afresh with the new month.

The thought of Tom and his trouble weighs on me so that I have been miserable all day. Miss Charlotte has not been here this week. Her beloved plants need attention, and she is doing mysterious things with clippers and trowels, selecting bulbs, sorting out seeds, making plans for her garden beds, and working herself into a delightful fever of excitement over the coming glories of her garden. It is really rather early, I think, but in her impatience she cannot wait. Her flowers are her children, and all her affection for family and kin, having nothing nearer to cling to, is lavished on them. It is so fortunate that she has this taste. I cannot help to-day feeling so old and lonely that I could almost envy her her fondness for gardening. I must cultivate a taste for something, if it is only for cats. I wonder how Peter would like to have me set up an asylum for crippled and impoverished tabbies!

Over and over again I have asked myself what I can do to help Deacon Webbe, but I have found no answer. One of the hardest things in life is to see our friends bear the consequences of their mistakes. Deacon Daniel is suffering for the way he brought Tom up, and yet he has done as well as he was able. Father used to say what I declared was a hard saying, and which was the harder because in my heart of hearts I could never with any success dispute it. "You cannot wisely help anybody until you are willing not to interfere with the discipline that life and nature give," he said. "You would not offer to take a child's medicine for it; why should you try to bear the brunt of a friend's suffering when it comes from his own fault? That is nature's medicine." I remember that once I answered I would very gladly take a child's medicine for it if I could, and Father laughed and pinched my ear. "Don't try to be Providence," he said. I would like to be Providence for Deacon Webbe and Tom now,--and for the girl, too. It makes me shiver to think of her, and if I had to see or to touch her, it would be more than I could endure.

This moralizing shows that I am low in my mind. I have been so out of sorts that I was completely out of key to-day with George. I have had to see him often about the estate, but he has seemed always anxious to get away as quickly as possible. To-day he lingered almost in the old fashion; and I somehow found him altered. He is--I cannot tell how he is changed, but he is. He has a manner less--

It is time to stop writing when I own the trouble to be my own wrong-headedness and then go on to set down imaginary faults in my neighbors.

April 3. I am beset with deacons lately. Deacon Richards has been here for an hour, and he has left me so restless that I may as well try to write myself into calmness.

Deacon Richards never seems so big as when he stands talking with me, looking down on the top of my head, with his great bald forehead looming above his keen eyes like a mountain-top. I always get him seated as soon as I can, and he likes to sit in Father's wide arm-chair. One of the things that I like best about him is that, brusque and queer as he is, he never takes that seat until he has been especially asked. Then as he sits down he says always, with a little softening of his great voice,--

"This was your father's chair."

He has never been out of Tuskamuck a fortnight, I dare say; but there is something about this simple speech, ready for it as I of course always am, that almost brings the tears to my eyes. He is country born and country bred, but the delicacy of the courtesy underlying his brusqueness is pure gold. What nonsense it is for Cousin Mehitable to insist that we are too countrified to have any gentlemen! She does not appreciate the old New England stock.

What Deacon Daniel wanted I could not imagine, but while we were talking of the weather and the common things of the day I could see that he was preparing to say something. He has a wonderful smile when he chooses to show it. It always reminds me of the picture one sees sometimes of a genial face peering from behind a glum mask. When I teased him about the vestry fires, he only grinned; but his grin is to his smile as the smell of peppermint to that of a rose. He amused me by his comments of Aunt Naomi.

"She runs after gossip," he said, "just as a kitten runs after its tail. It doesn't mean anything, but it must do something."

"She is a shrewd creature," I answered. "It is absurd enough to compare anybody so decorous to a kitten."

"Aunt Naomi's nobody's fool," was his response. "She sent me here to-night."

"Sent you here?" I echoed.

His face grew suddenly grave.

"I don't know how this thing will strike you, Miss Ruth," he said explosively. "It seems to me all wrong. The fact is," he added more calmly, but with the air of meaning to have a disagreeable thing over, "it's about the Brownrig girl. You know about her, and that she is very sick."

"Yes," I said.

He stretched out his large hand toward the fire in a way that showed he was not at ease. I could not help noticing the difference between the hand of this Deacon Daniel and that of the other. Deacon Webbe is a farmer, and has a farmer's hand. Deacon Richards has the white hand of a miller.

"I don't see myself," he said grimly, looking into the coals, "that there is likely to be anything contagious in her wickedness, but none of the women are willing to go near her. I should think she'd serve pretty well as a warning. The Overseers of the Poor 've sent old Marm Bagley to nurse her, and that seems to be their part; but who's to look out that Marm Bagley doesn't keep drunk all the time's more than I can see."

He sniffed scornfully, as if his opinion of women was far from flattering.

"How did you know about it?" I asked.

"Job Pearson--he's one of the Overseers--came to see if there wasn't somebody the church could send down. I went to Aunt Naomi, but she couldn't think of anybody. She's housed with a cold, and she wouldn't be the one to go into a sick-room anyway."

"And she sent you here?"

He turned to me with the smile which I can never resist.

"The truth is," he answered, "that when there's nothing else to do we all come to you, Miss Ruth."

"But what can I do?"

"That is what I came to see."

"Did you expect me to go down and nurse the girl?"

He looked at me with a shrewd twinkle in his eye, and for a moment said nothing.

"I just expected if there was anything possible to be done you'd think of it," he replied.

I thought for a moment, and then I told him I would write to Cousin Mehitable to send down a trained nurse from Boston.

"The Overseers won't pay her," he commented with a grin.

"Perhaps you will," I returned, knowing perfectly that he was trying to tease.

"It will take several days at least to get her here."

We considered for a little in silence. I do not know what passed through his mind, but I thought with a positive sickening of soul of being under the same roof with that girl. I knew that it must be done, though; and, simply to be rid of the dread of it, I said as steadily as I could,--

"I will go down in the morning."

And so it has come about that I am to be nurse to the Brownrig girl and to Tom Webbe's baby.

April 6. The last four days have been so full and so exhausting that there has been no time for scribbling in diaries. Like Pepys I have now to write up the interval, although I cannot bring myself to his way of dating things as if he always wrote on the very day on which they happened. Father used to laugh at me because I always insisted that it was not honest of Pepys to put down one date when he really wrote on another.

Tuesday forenoon I went down to the Brownrig house. I had promised myself not to let the sick girl see how I shrank from her, but I had a sensation of sickening repugnance almost physical. When I got to the red house I was so ashamed of myself that I forgot everything else. The girl was so sick, the place so cheerless, so dirty, so poverty-stricken; she was so dreadful to look at, with her tangled black hair, her hot cheeks, her fierce eyes; everything was so miserable and dreadful, that I could have cried with pity. Julia was in a bed so dirty that it would have driven me to distraction; the pillow-slip was ragged, and the comforter torn in great places, as if a wild cat had clawed it. Marm Bagley was swaying back and forth in an old broken rocking-chair, smoking a black pipe, which perhaps she thought fumigated the foul air of the sick-room. She had the appearance of paying very little attention to the patient and none at all to the baby, which wailed incessantly from a shabby clothes-basket in a corner. The whole scene was so sordid, so pitiful, so hopeless, that I could think only of the misery, and so forget my shrinking and dread.

A Munson boy, that the Overseers of the Poor had sent down, was chopping wood in the yard, and I dispatched him to the house for Hannah and clean linen, while I tried to get Marm Bagley to attend to the baby and to help me to put things to rights a little. She smelled of spirits like another Sairey Gamp, and her wits did not appear to be entirely steady. After I found her holding the baby under her arm literally upside down, while she prepared its food, I decided that unless I wished to run the risk of being held as accessory to the murder of the infant, I had better look after it myself.

"Can't you pick up the room a little while I feed the baby?" I asked.

"Don't see no use of clearing up none," she said. "'Tain't time for the funeral yet."

This, I suppose, was some sort of an attempt at a rudimentary joke, but it was a most ghastly one. I looked at the sick girl to see if she heard and understood. It was evident that she had, but it seemed to me that she did not care. I went to the bedside.

"I ought to have spoken to you when I came in," I said, "but your eyes were shut, and I thought you might be asleep. I am Miss Privet, and I have come to help Mrs. Bagley take care of you till a regular nurse can get here from Boston."

She looked at me with a strange sparkle in her eyes.

"From Boston?" she repeated.

"Yes," I said. "I have sent to my cousin to get a regular trained nurse."

She stared at me with her piercing eyes opened to their fullest extent.

"Do they train 'em?" she asked.

"Yes," I told her. "A trained nurse is almost as good as a doctor."

"Then I shall get well?" she demanded eagerly. "She'll get me well?"

"I hope so," I said, with as much of a smile as I could muster when I wanted to cry. "And before she comes we must clear up a little."

I began to do what I could about the room without making too much bustle. The girl watched me with eager eyes, and at last, as I came near the bed, she asked suddenly,--

"Did he send you?"

I felt myself growing flushed, though there was no reason for it.

"Deacon Richards asked me to come," I answered.

"I don't know him," she commented, evidently confused. "Is he Overseer?"

I hushed her, and went on with my work, for I wanted to think what I had better tell her. Of course Marm Bagley was of no use, but when Hannah came things went better. Hannah was scandalized at my being there at all, and of course would not hear of my doing the rough work. She took possession of Mrs. Bagley, and ordered her about with a vigor which completely dazed that unsatisfactory person, and amused me so much that my disturbed spirits rose once more. This was all very well as long as it lasted, but Hannah had to go home for dinner, and when the restraint of her presence was removed Marm Bagley reasserted herself. She tied a frowzy bonnet over a still more frowzy head, lighted her pipe, and departed for the woods behind the house.

"When that impudent old hired girl o' yours's got all through and got out," she remarked, "you can hang a towel out the shed winder, and I'll come back. I ain't got no occasion to stay here and git ordered round by no hired girl of anybody's."

My remonstrances were of no avail, since I would not promise not to let Hannah come into the house, and the fat old woman waddled away into the seclusion of the woods. I suppose she slept somewhere, though the woods must be so damp that the indulgence seems rather a dangerous one; but at nightfall she returned more odorous, and more like Sairey Gamp than ever.

Hannah came back, and we did what we could. When Dr. Wentworth came in the afternoon he allowed us to get Julia into clean linen, and she did seem grateful for the comfort of fresh sheets and pillow-slips. It amused me that Hannah had not only taken the servants' bedding, but had picked out the oldest.

"I took the wornest ones," she explained. "Of course we wouldn't any of us ever want to sleep in them again."

She was really shocked at my proposing to remain for the night.

"It ain't for you, Miss Ruth, to be taking care of such folks," she declared; "and as for that Bagley woman, I'd as soon have a bushel basket of cockroaches in the house as her, any time."

Even this lively image did not do away with the necessity of my remaining. I could not propose to Hannah to take my place. The mere fact of being mistress often forces one to do things which servants would feel insulted if asked to undertake. Father used to say, "Remember that _noblesse oblige_ does not exist in the kitchen;" though of course this is true only in a sense. Servants have their own ideas of what is due to position, I am sure; only that their ideas are so different, and often so funnily different, from ours. I could not leave the sick girl to the mercies of Mrs. Bagley, and so I had no choice but to stay.

All day long Julia watched me with a closeness most strangely disconcerting. She evidently could not make out why I was there. In the evening, as I sat by her, she said suddenly,--

"I dunno what you think yer'll get by it."

"Get by what?"

"Bein' here."

I smiled at her manner, and told her that at least I had already got the satisfaction of seeing her more comfortable. She made no reply for a time, but evidently was considering the matter. I did not think it well for her to talk, so I sat knitting quietly, while Mrs. Bagley loomed in the background, rocking creakingly.

"'Twon't please him none," she said at last. "He don't care a damn for me."

I tried to take this without showing that I understood it.

"I'm not trying to please anybody," I responded. "When a neighbor is sick and needs help, of course anybody would come."

"Humph! Folks hain't been so awful anxious to help me."

"There is a good deal of sickness in town," I explained.

"'Tain't nobody's business to come, anyhow," commented Mrs. Bagley dispassionately.

"There's precious few'd come if 'twas," the girl muttered.

"Has anybody been to see you?" I asked.

The Brownrig girl turned her fierce eyes up to me with a look which made me think of some wild bird hurt and caged.

"One old woman that sat and chewed her veil and swung her foot at me. She never come but once."

I had no difficulty in recognizing this portrait, even without Mrs. Bagley's explanatory comment.

"That was Aunt Naomi Dexter," she remarked. "She's always poking round."

"Miss Dexter is one of the kindest women alive," I said, "though she is a little odd in her manner sometimes."

"She said she hoped I'd found things bad enough to give me a hankerin' for something better," went on Julia with increasing bitterness. "God! How does she think I'd get anything better? What does she know about it, anyway?"

"There, there, Jule," interposed Mrs. Bagley in a sort of professional tone, "now don't go to gettin' excited and rampageous. You know she brought you some rippin' flannel for the baby. Them pious folks has to talk, but, Lord, nobody minds it, and you hadn't ought ter. They don't really mean nothing much."

It seemed to be time to interpose, and I forbade Julia to talk, sent Mrs. Bagley off to sleep in the one other bedroom, and settled down for the night's watching. The patient fell asleep at last, and I was left to care for the fire and the poor little pathetic, forlorn, dreadful baby. The child was swathed in Aunt Naomi's "rippin' flannel," and I fell into baffling reflections in regard to human life. After all, I had no right to judge this poor broken girl lying there much more in danger than she could dream. What do I know of the intolerable life that has not self-respect, not even cleanliness of mind or body? Society and morality have so fenced us about and so guarded us that we have rather to try to get outside than to struggle to keep in; and what do we know of the poor wretches fighting for life with wild beasts in the open? I am so glad I do not believe that sin is what one actually does, but is the proportion between deeds and opportunity. How carefully Father explained this to me when I was not much more than a child, and how strange it is that so many people cannot seem to understand it! If I thought the moral law an inflexible thing like a human statute, for which one was held responsible arbitrarily and whether he knows the law or not, I should never be able to endure the sense of injustice. Of course men have to be arbitrary, because they can see only tangible things and must judge by outward acts; but if this were true of a deity he would cease to be a deity at all, and be simply a man with unlimited power to do harm.

April 7. I found myself so running aground last night in metaphysics that it seemed just as well to go to bed, diary or no diary. I was besides too tired to write down my interview with Mrs. Webbe.

I was just about to go home for a bath and a nap after watching that first night, when, without even knocking, Mrs. Deacon Webbe opened the outside door. I was in the kitchen, and so met her before she got further. Naturally I was surprised to see her at six o'clock in the day.

"Good-morning," I said.

"I knew you were here yesterday," she said by way of return for my greeting, "but I thought I'd get here before you came back this morning."

"I have been here all night," I answered.

She looked at me with her piercing black eyes, which always seem to go into the very recesses of one's thoughts, and then, in a manner rather less aggressive, remarked,--

"I've come to speak to this Brownrig girl. You know well enough why."

"I'm afraid you can't see her," I answered, ignoring the latter part of her words. "She is not so well this morning, and Dr. Wentworth told us to keep her as quiet as possible."

Mrs. Webbe leaned forward with an expression on her face which made me look away.

"Is she going to die?" she demanded.

I turned away, and began to close the door. I could not bear her manner. She has too much cause to hate the girl, but just then, with the poor thing sick to the very point of death, I could never have felt as she looked.

"I'm sure I hope not," I returned. "We expect to have a professional nurse to-morrow, and then things will go better."

"A professional nurse?"

"Yes; we have sent to Boston for one."

"Sent to Boston for a nurse for that creature? She's a great deal better dead! She only leads men"--

"If you will excuse me, Mrs. Webbe," interrupted I, pushing the door still nearer to closing, "I ought to go back to my patient. It isn't my business to decide who had better be dead."

She started forward suddenly, taking me unawares, and before I understood what she intended, she had thrust herself through the door into the house.

"If it isn't your business," she demanded sharply, "what are you here for? What right have you to interfere? If Providence is willing to take the creature out of the way, what are you trying to keep her alive for?"

I put up my hand and stopped her.

"Will you be quiet?" I said. "I cannot have her disturbed."

"You cannot!" she repeated, raising her voice. "Who gave you a right to order me round, Ruth Privet? Is this your house?"

I knew that her shrill voice would easily penetrate to Julia's bedroom, and indeed there was only a thin door between the sick girl and the kitchen where we were. I took Mrs. Webbe by the wrist as strongly as I could, and before she could collect her wits, I led her out of the house, and down to the gate.

"What are you doing?" she demanded. "How dare you drag me about?"

"I beg your pardon," I said, dropping my hold. "I think you did not understand, Mrs. Webbe, that as nurse I cannot have my patient excited."

She looked at me in a blaze of anger. I have never seen a woman so carried away by rage, and it is frightful. Yet she seemed to be making an effort to control herself. I was anxious to help her if I could, so I forced a smile, although I am afraid it was not a very warm one, and I assumed as conciliatory a manner as I could muster.

"You must think I was rather abrupt," I said, "but I did not mean to be. I couldn't explain to you in the kitchen, the partition is so thin. You see she's in the room that opens out of it."

Mrs. Webbe softened somewhat.

"It is very noble of you to be here," she said in a new tone, and one which I must confess did not to me have a genuine ring; "it's splendid of you, but what's the use of it? What affair of yours is it, anyway?"

I was tempted to serve her up a quotation about a certain man who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves, but I resisted.

"I could come, Mrs. Webbe, and apparently nobody else could."

"They wouldn't," she rejoined frankly. "Don't you see everybody else knew it was a case to be let alone?"

I asked her why.

"Everybody felt as if it was," responded she quickly. "I hope you don't set up to be wiser than everybody else put together."

"I don't set up for anything," I declared, "but I may as well confess that I see no sense in what you say. Here's a human creature that needs help, and it seems to be my place to help her."

"It's a nice occupation for the daughter of Judge Privet to be nursing a disreputable thing like a Brownrig."

"A Privet," I answered, "is likely to be able to stand it. You wouldn't let the girl die alone, would you?"

"She wasn't alone. Mrs. Bagley was here."

"You wouldn't let her die with Mrs. Bagley, then?"

Mrs. Webbe looked me straight in the eye for a moment, with a look as hard as polished steel.

"Yes," she said, "I would."

I could only stare at her in silence.

"There," she went on, "make the best of that. I'm not going to be mealy-mouthed. I would let her die, and be glad of it. Why should I want her alive? Do you think I've no human feelings? Do you think I'd ever forgive her for dragging Tom into the mud? I've been on my knees half the night praying she and her brat might both die and leave us in peace! If there's any justice in heaven, a man like Deacon Webbe won't be loaded down with the disgrace of a grandchild like that."

There was a sort of fascination in her growing wildness. Everybody knows how she sneers at the meekness of her husband, and that she is continually saying he hasn't any force, but here she was catching at his goodness as a sort of bribe to Heaven to let her have the life of mother and child. I could not answer her, but could only be thankful no houses were near. Mrs. Bagley would hear, I supposed, but that could not be helped.

"What do you know about how I feel?" she demanded, swooping down upon me so that I involuntarily shrank back against the fence. "It is all very pretty for you to have ideas of charity, and play at taking care of the sick. I dare say you mean well enough, Miss Privet, but this isn't a case for you. Go home, and let Providence take care of that girl. God'll look after her!"

I stood up straight, and faced her in my turn.

"Stop!" I cried. "I'm not a believer in half the things you are, but I do have some respect for the name of God. If you mean to kill this girl, don't try to lay the blame on Providence!"

She shrank as if I had struck her; then she rallied again with a sneer.

"I think I know better than an atheist what it is right to say about my own religion," was her retort.

Somehow the words appealed to my sense of humor, and unconsciously I smiled.

"Well," I said, "we will not dispute about words. Only I think you had better go now."

Perhaps my slight smile vexed her; perhaps it was only that she saw I was off my guard. She turned quickly, and before I had any notion of what she intended, she had run swiftly up the path to the house. I followed instantly. The idea of having a personal encounter with Mrs. Webbe was shocking, but I could not let her go to trouble Julia without making an effort to stop her. I thought I might reach the door first, but she was too quick for me. Before I could prevent her, she had crossed the kitchen and opened the door of the sick-room. I followed, and we came almost together into the room, although she was a few steps in advance. She went hastily to the bed. Julia had been awakened by the noise, and stared at Mrs. Webbe in a fright.

"Oh, here you are, are you?" Mrs. Webbe began. "How did you dare to say that my son was the father of your brat? I'd like to have you whipped, you nasty slut!"

"Mrs. Webbe," I said resolutely, "if you do not leave the house instantly, I will have you arrested before the sun goes down."

She was diverted from her attack upon Julia, and wheeled round to me.

"Arrested!" she echoed. "You can't do it."

"I can do it, and you know me well enough to know that if I say it, I mean it. I'm not a lawyer's daughter for nothing. Go out of the house this instant, and leave that sick girl alone. Do you want to kill her?"

She blazed at me with eyes that might have put me to flight if I had had only myself to defend.

"Do you think I want her to live? I told you once she ought to be out of the way. Do you think you are doing a favor to Tom by keeping this disreputable thing alive?"

I took her by the wrist again.

"You had better go," I said. "You heard what I said. I mean it."

I confess that now I consider it all, the threat to have her arrested seems rather silly, and I do not see how I could well have carried it out. At the moment it appeared to me the simplest thing in the world, and at least it effected my purpose to frighten Mrs. Webbe with the law. She turned slowly toward the door, but as she went she looked over her shoulder at Julia.

"You are a nice thing to try to keep alive," she sneered. "The doctor says you haven't a chance, and you'd better be making your peace with God. I wouldn't have your heap of sins on my head for anything."

I put my hand over her lips.

"Mrs. Bagley," I said, "take her other arm."

Mrs. Bagley, who had apparently been too confused to understand what was going on, and had stood with her mouth wide open in blear-eyed astonishment, did as I commanded, and we led Mrs. Webbe out of the room. I motioned Mrs. Bagley back into the bedroom to look after Julia, and shut the door behind her. Then I took Mrs. Webbe by the shoulders and looked her in the face.

"I had rather have that girl's sins on my head than yours," I said. "You came here with murder in your heart, and you would be glad to kill her outright, if you dared. If you have not murdered her as it is, you may be thankful."

I felt as if I was as much of a shrew as she, but something had to be done. She looked as if she were as much astonished as impressed, but she went. Only at the door she turned back to say,--

"I'll come again to see my grandchild."

After that I hardly dared to leave the house, but I got Hannah to stand guard while I was at home. She has a deep-seated dislike for Mrs. Webbe, and I fear would greatly have enjoyed an encounter with her; but Mrs. Webbe did not return.

Now that I go over it all, I seem to have been engaged in a disreputable squabble, but I do not see what else there was for me to do. Julia was so terrified and excited that I had to send for Dr. Wentworth as soon as I could find anybody to go. I set Mrs. Bagley to watch for a passer, and she took her pipe and went placidly to sleep before the door. I had to be with Julia, yet keep running out to spy for a messenger, and it was an hour before I caught one. By the time the doctor got to us the girl was in hysterics, declaring she did not want to die, she did not dare to die, could not, would not die. All that day she was constantly starting out of her sleep with a cry; and by the time night had come, I began to feel that Mrs. Webbe would have her wish.

April 8. That night was a dreadful one to me. The nurse from Boston had not come, and I could not leave the girl alone with Mrs. Bagley. Indeed Marm Bagley seemed more and more inefficient. I think she took advantage of the fact that she no longer felt any responsibility. The smell of spirits and tobacco about her grew continually stronger, and I was kept from sending her away altogether only by the fact that it did not seem right for me to be alone with Julia. No house is near, and if anything happened in the night I should have been without help. Julia was evidently worse. The excitement of Mrs. Webbe's visit had told on her, and whenever she went to sleep she began to cry out in a way that was most painful.

About the middle of the night, that dreadfully forlorn time when the day that is past has utterly died out and nothing shows the hope of another to come, Julia woke moaning and crying. She started up in bed, her eyes really terrible to see, her cheeks crimson with fever, and her black hair tangled all about her face.

"Oh, I am dying!" she shrieked.

For the instant I thought that she was right, and it was dreadful to hear her.

"I shall die and go to hell!" she cried. "Oh, pray! Pray!"

I caught at my scattered wits and tried to soothe her. She clung to me as if she were in the greatest physical terror.

"I am dying!" she kept repeating. "Oh, can't you do something for me? Can't you save me? Oh, I can't die! I can't die!"

She was so wild that her screams awakened Mrs. Bagley, who came running in half dressed, as she had lain down for the night.

"Lawk-a-marcy, child," she said, coming up to the bed, "if you was dying do you think you'd have strength to holler like that?"

The rough question had more effect than my efforts to calm the girl. She sank back on the pillow, sobbing, and staring at Mrs. Bagley.

"I ain't got no strength," she insisted. "I know I'm goin' to die right away."

"Nonsense, Jule," was Mrs. Bagley's response. "I know when folks is dyin', I guess. I've seen enough of 'um. You're all right if you'll stop actin' like a blame fool."

I see now that this was exactly the way in which the girl needed to be talked to. It was her own language, and she understood it. At the time it seemed to me brutal, and I interposed.

"There, Mrs. Bagley," I said as soothingly as I could, "you are rather hard on Julia. She is too sick to be talked to so."

Marm Bagley sniffed contemptuously, and after looking at us a moment, apparently decided that the emergency was not of enough importance to keep her from her rest, so she returned to her interrupted slumbers. I comforted my patient as well as I could, and fortunately she was not again violent. Still she moaned and cried, and kept urging me to pray for her.

"Pray for me! Pray for me!" she kept repeating. "Oh, can't you pray and keep me from hell, Miss Ruth?"

There was but one thing to be done. If prayer was the thing which would comfort her, evidently I ought to pray with her.

"I will pray if you will be quiet," I said. "I cannot if you go on like this."

"I'll be still, I'll be still," she cried eagerly. "Only pray quick!"

I kneeled down by the bed and repeated the Lord's Prayer as slowly and as impressively as I could. The girl, who seemed to regard it as a sort of spell against invisible terrors, clutched my hand with a desperate grasp, but as I went on the pressure of her hot fingers relaxed. Before I had finished she had fallen asleep as abruptly as she had awakened.

I sat watching her, thinking what a strange thing is this belief in prayer. The words I had said are beautiful, but I do not suppose this made an impression on Julia. To her the prayer was a fetich, a spell to ward her soul from the dark terrors of Satan, a charm against the powers of the air. I wondered if I should be happier if I could share this belief in the power of men to move the unseen by supplication, but I reflected that this would imply the continual discomfort of believing in invisible beings who would do me harm unless properly placated, and I was glad to be as I am. The faith of some Christians is so noble, so sweet, so tender, that it is not always easy to realize how narrowing are the conditions of mind which make it possible. When one sees the crude superstition of a creature like Julia, it is not difficult to be glad to be above a feeling so ignorant and degrading; when I see the beautiful tenderness of religion in its best aspect I am glad it can be so fine and so comforting, but I am glad I am not limited in that way.

My prayer with Julia had one unexpected result. While I was at home in the morning Mr. Thurston came to see her. The visit was most kind, and I think it did her good.

"He did some real praying," Mrs. Bagley explained to me afterward. "Course Jule'd rather have that."

My efforts in the devotional line had more effect, so far as I could judge, upon Mr. Thurston than upon Julia. I met him when I was going back to the house, and he stopped me with an expression of gladness and triumph in his face.

"My dear Miss Privet," he said, "I am so glad that at last you have come to realize the efficacy of prayer."

I was so astonished at the remark that for the moment I did not realize what he meant.

"I don't understand," I said, stupidly enough.

My look perhaps confused him a little, and his face lost something of its brightness.

"That poor girl told me of your praying with her last night, when she thought she was dying."

"Yes," I repeated, before I realized what I was saying, "she thought she was dying."

Then I reflected that it was useless to hurt his feelings, and I did not explain. I could not wound him by saying that if Julia had wanted me to repeat a gypsy charm and I had known one I should have done it in the same spirit. I wanted to make the poor demented thing comfortable, and if a prayer could soothe her there was no reason why I should not say one. People think because I do not believe in it I have a prejudice against prayer; but really I think there is something touching and noble in the attitude of a mind that can in sincerity and in faith give itself up to an ideal, as one must in praying. It seems to me a pathetic mistake, but I can appreciate the good side of it; only to suppose that I believe because I said a prayer to please a frightened sick girl is absurd.

It is well that we are not read by others, for our thoughts would often be too disconcerting. Poor Mr. Thurston would have been dreadfully horrified if he had realized I was thinking as we stood there how like my saying this prayer for Julia was to my ministering to Rosa's chilblains. She believes that crosses cut out of a leaf of the Bible and stuck on her feet take away the soreness, but she regards it as wicked to cut up a Bible. I have an old one that I keep for the purpose, and she comes to me every winter for a supply. We began at the end, and are going backwards. Revelation is about used up now. She evidently thinks that as I am a heretic anyway, the extra condemnation which must come from my act will make no especial difference, and I am entirely willing to run the risk. Still, it is better Mr. Thurston did not read my thought.

"I wish you might be brought into the fold," the clergyman said after a moment of silence.

I could only thank him, and go on my way.

April 10. Yesterday the new nurse, Miss Dyer, arrived, and great is the comfort of having her here. She is a plain, simple body, in her neat uniform, rather colorless except for her snapping black eyes. Her eyes are interestingly at variance with the calmness of her demeanor, and give one the impression that there is a volcano somewhere within. She interests me much,--largely, I fancy, from the suggestion about her of having had a history. She is swift and yet silent in her motions, and understands what she has to do so well that I felt like an awkward novice beside her. She disposed of Mrs. Bagley with a turn of the hand, as it were, somehow managing that the frowzy old woman was out of the house within an hour, with her belongings, pipe and all, yet without any fuss or any contention. Mrs. Bagley had the appearance of being too dazed to be angry, although I fancy when she has had time to think matters over she will be indignantly wrathful at having been so summarily expelled.

"I pity you more for having that sort of a woman in the house than for having to take care of the patient, Miss Privet," Miss Dyer said. "I don't see what the Lord permits such folks in the world for, without it is to sharpen up our Christian charity."

"She would sharpen mine into vinegar, I'm afraid," I answered, laughing. "I confess it has been about all I could do to stay in the house with her."

To-night I can sleep peacefully in my own bed, secure that Julia is well taken care of. The girl seems to me to be worse instead of better, and Dr. Wentworth does not give much encouragement. I suppose it is better for her to die, but it is cruel that she wants so to live. She is horribly afraid of death, and she wants so much to live that it is pitiful to reflect it is possible she may not. What is there she can hope for? She does not seem to care for the child. This is because she is so ill, I think, for anybody must be touched by the helplessness of the little blinking, pink thing. It is like a little mouse I saw in my childhood, and which made a great impression on me. That was naked of hair, just so wrinkled, so pink, so blinking. It was not in the least pretty, any more than the baby is; but somehow it touched all the tenderness there was in me, and I cried for days because Hannah gave it to the cat. I feel much in the same way about this baby. I have not the least feeling toward it as a human being, I am afraid. To me it is just embodied babyhood, just a little pink, helpless, palpitating bunch of pitifulness.

April 11. Miss Dyer came just in time. I could not have gone through to-night without her, I think. I could not have stayed quiet by Julia's beside, although I am as far as possible from being able to sleep.

To-night, just as the evening was falling, and I was almost ready to come home, I heard a knock at the door. Miss Dyer was in the room with Julia, so I answered the knock myself. I opened the door to find myself face to face with Tom Webbe.

The shock of seeing his white face staring at me out of the dusk was so great that I had to steady myself against the door-post. He did not put out his hand, but greeted me only by taking off his hat.

"Father said you were here," he began, in a strained voice.

"Yes," I answered, feeling my throat contract; "I am here now, but I am going home soon."

I was so moved and so confused that I could not think. I had longed for him to come; I could not have borne that he should have been so base as not to come; and yet now that he was here I would have given anything to have him away. He had to come; he had to bear his part of the consequences of wrong, but it was horrible to me for him to be so near that dreadful girl, and it was worse because I pitied her, because she was so helpless, so pathetic, so near even to death.

We stood in the dusk for what seemed to me a long time without further speech. Tom must have found it hard to know what to say at such a time. He looked at me with a sort of wild desperation. Then he cleared his throat, and moistened his lips.

"I have come," he said. "What do you want me to do?"

I could not bear to have him seem to put the responsibility on me.

"I did not send for you," I answered quickly.

He gave me the wan ghost of a smile.

"Do you suppose that I should have come of myself?" he returned. "What shall I do?"

I would not take the burden. The decision must be his.

"You must do what you think right," I said. Then I added, with a queer feeling as if I were thinking aloud, "What you think right to her and to--to the baby."

His face darkened, and I was glad that I had not said "your baby." I understood it was natural for him to look angry at the thought of the child, the unwelcome and unwitting betrayer of what he would have kept hidden; and yet somehow I resented his look.

"The baby is not to blame, Tom," I said. "It has every right to blame you."

"To blame me?" he repeated.

"If it has to bear a shame all its life, whose fault is it, its own or yours? If it has been born to a life like that of its mother, it certainly has no occasion to thank you."

He turned his flushed and shamed face away from me, and looked out into the darkening sky. I could see how he was holding himself in check, and that it was hard for him. I hated to be there, to be seeing him, to be talking over a matter that it was intolerable even to think about; but since I was there, I wanted to help him,--only I did not know how. I wanted to give him my hand, but I somehow shrank from touching his. I felt as if it was wicked and cruel to hold back, but between us came continually the consciousness of Julia and that little red baby sleeping in the clothes-basket. I am humiliated now to think of it, but the truth is that I was a brute to Tom.

Suddenly Tom turned for a moment toward the west, so that the little lingering light of the dying day fell on his face, and I saw by his set lips and the look in his eyes that he had come to some determination. Then he faced me slowly.

"Ruth," he said, "I would go down into hell for you, and I'm going to do something that is worse. What's past, it's no use to make excuses for, and you're too good to understand if I told you how I got into this foul mess. Now"--

He stopped, with a catch in his voice, and I wanted more than I can tell to say something to help him, but no words came. I could not think; I wanted to comfort him as I comfort Kathie when she is desperate. The evident difficulty he had in keeping his self-control moved me more than anything he could have said.

"I'll marry the girl," he burst out in a moment. "You are right about the baby. It's no matter about Jule. She isn't of any account anyway, and she never expected me to marry her. I'll never see her after she's--after I've done it. It makes me sick to think of her, but I'll do what I can for the baby." He stopped, and caught his breath. I could feel in the dusk, rather than see, that he looked up, as if he were trying to read my face in the darkness. "I will marry her," he went on, "on one condition."

"What is that?" I asked, with my throat so dry that it ached.

"That you will take the child."

I think now that we must both have spoken like puppets talking by machinery. I hardly seemed to myself to be alive and real, but this proposition awoke me like a blow. I could at first only gasp, too much overcome to bring out a word.

"But its mother?" I managed to stammer at last.

"If I'm to marry her for the sake of the child," he answered in a voice I hardly recognized, "it would be perfect tomfoolery to leave it to grow up with the Brownrigs. If that's to be the plan, I'll save myself. Jule doesn't mind not being married. You don't know what a tribe the Brownrigs are. It's an insult for me to be talking to you about them, only it can't be helped. Is it a boy or a girl?"

I told him.

"And you think a girl ought to be left to follow the noble example of the mother!"

"Oh no, no!" I cried out. "Anything is better than that."

"That is what must happen unless you take the poor thing," he said in a voice which, though it was hard, seemed somehow to have a quiver in it.

"But would she give the baby up?" I asked. "She's its mother."

"Jule? She'll be only too glad to get rid of it. Anyway she'd do what I told her to."

I tried to think clearly and quickly. To have the baby left to follow in the steps of its mother was a thing too terrible to be endured, and yet I shrank selfishly from taking upon my shoulders the responsibility of training the child. Whatever Tom decided about the marriage, however, I felt that he should not have to resolve under pressure. If he were doing it for the sake of the baby's future, I could clear his way of that complication. I could not bear the thought of having Tom marry Julia. This would be a bond on his whole life; and yet I could not feel that he had a right to shirk it now. If I agreed to take the child, that would leave him free to decide without being pushed on by fear about the baby. My mind seemed to me wonderfully clear. I see now it was all in a whirl, and that the only thing I was sure of was that if it would help him for me to take the baby there was nothing else for me to do.

"Tom," I said, "I do not, and I will not, decide for you; and I will not have anything to do with conditions. If she will give me the baby, I will take it, and you may decide the rest without any reference to that at all."

He took a step forward so quickly and so fiercely that he startled me, and put out his hand as if he meant to take me by the arm. Then he dropped it.

"Do you think," he said, "that I would have an illegitimate brat near you? It is bad enough as it is, but you shall not have the reproach of that."

My cheeks grew hot, but the whole talk was so strange and so painful that I let this pass with the rest. I cannot tell how I felt, but I know the remembrance of it makes my eyes swim so that I cannot write without stopping continually; and I am writing here half the night because I cannot sleep. I could not answer Tom; I only stood dully silent until he spoke again.

"I know I can't have you, Ruth," he said, "and I know you were right. I'm not good enough for you."

"I never said that," I interrupted. "I never thought that."

"Never mind. It's true; but I'd have been a man if you'd have given me a chance."

"Oh, Tom," I broke in, "don't! It is not fair to make me responsible!"

"No," he acknowledged, with the shake of his shoulders I have known ever since we were children; "you are not to blame. It's only my infernal, sneaking self!"

I could not bear this, either. Everything that was said hurt me; and it seemed to me that I had borne all that I could endure.

"Will you go away now, Tom," I begged him. "I--I can't talk any more to-night. Shall I tell Julia you have come?"

He gave a start at the name, and swore under his breath.

"It is damnable for you to be here with that girl," he burst out bitterly; "and I brought it on you! It isn't your place, though. Where are all the Christians and church members? I suppose all the pious are too good to come. They might get their righteousness smudged. Oh, how I hate hypocrisy!"

"Don't, Tom," I interrupted. "Go away, please."

My voice was shaky; and indeed I was fast getting to the place where I should have broken down in hysterical weeping.

"I'll go," he responded quickly. "I'll come in the morning with a minister. Will eight o'clock do? I'd like to get it over with."

The bitterness of his tone was too much for me. I caught one of his hands in both of mine.

"Oh, Tom," I said, "are you quite sure this is what you ought to do?"

"Do you tell me not to marry her?" he demanded fiercely.

I was completely unnerved; I could only drop his hand and press my own on my bosom, as if this would help me to breathe easier.

"Oh no, no," I cried, half sobbing. "I can't, I can't. I haven't the right to say anything; but I do think it is the thing you ought to do. Only you are so noble to do it!"

He made a sound as if he would answer, and then he turned away suddenly, and dashed off with great strides. I could not go back into the house, but came home without saying good-night, or letting Miss Dyer know. I must be ready to go back as soon as it is light.

April 12. It seems so far back to this morning that I might have had time to change into a different person; and yet most of the day I have simply been longing to get home and think quietly. I wanted to adjust myself to the new condition of things. Last night the idea that Tom should marry the girl was so strange and unreal that it could make very little impression on me. Now it is done it is more appallingly real than anything else in the world.

I went down to the red house almost before light, but even as early as I came I found Tom already there. The nurse had objected to letting him in, and even when I came she was evidently uncertain whether she had done right in admitting him; but Tom has generally a way of getting what he is determined on, and before I reached the house everything had been arranged with Julia.

"I wanted to come before folks were about to see me," Tom said to me. "There'll be talk enough later, and I'd rather be out of the way. I've arranged it with her."

"Does she understand"--I began; but he interrupted.

"She understands all there is to understand; all that she could understand, anyway. She knows I'm marrying her for the sake of the child, and that you're to have it."

The Munson boy that I have hired to sleep in the house now Mrs. Bagley is gone, in order that Miss Dyer may have somebody within call, appeared at this minute with a pail of water, and we were interrupted. The boy stared with all his eyes, and I was half tempted to ask him not to speak of Tom's being here; but I reflected with a sick feeling that it was of no use to try to hide what was to be done. If Tom's act was to have any significance it must be known. I turned away with tears in my eyes, and went to Julia.

Julia I found with her eyes shining with excitement, and I could see that despite Tom's idea that she did not care about the marriage, she was greatly moved by it.

"Oh, Miss Privet," she cried out at once, "ain't he good! He's truly goin' to marry me after all! I never 'sposed he'd do that."

"You must have thought"--I began; and then, with a sinking consciousness of the difference between her world and mine, I stopped.

"And he says you want the baby," she went on, not noticing; "though I dunno what you want of it. It'll be a pesky bother for yer."

"Mr. Webbe wanted me to take it and bring it up."

"Well," Julia remarked with feeble dispassionateness, "I wouldn't 'f I was you."

"Are you willing I should have it?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm willing anything he wants," was her answer. "He's awful good to marry me. He never said he would. He's real white, he is."

She was quiet a moment, and then she broke out in a burst of joy.

"I never 'sposed I'd marry a real gentleman!" she cried.

Her shallow delight in marrying above her station was too pathetic to be offensive. I was somehow so moved by it that I turned away to hide my face from her; but she caught my hand and drew me back. Then she peered at me closely.

"You don't like it," she said excitedly. "You won't try to stop him?"

"No," I answered. "I think he ought to do it for the sake of his child."

She dropped her hold, and a curious look came into her face.

"That's what he said. Yer don't either of yer seem to count me for much."

I was silent, convicted to the soul that I had not counted her for much. I had accepted Tom's decision as right, not for the sake of this broken girl-mother, this castaway doomed to shame from her cradle, but for the sake purely of the baby that I was to take. It came over me how I might have been influenced too much by the selfish thought that it would be intolerable for me to have the child unless it had been as far as might be legitimatized by this marriage. I flushed with shame, and without knowing exactly what I was doing I bent over and kissed her.

"It is you he marries," I said.

Her tears sprang instantly, tears, I believe, of pure happiness.

"You're real good," she murmured, and then closed her eyes, whether from weakness or to conceal her emotion I could not be sure.

It was nearly eight before Mr. Thurston came. Tom has never been on good terms with Mr. Saychase, and it must have been easier for him to have a clergyman with whom he had never, I suppose, exchanged a word, than one who knew him and his people. I took the precaution to say at once to Mr. Thurston that Julia was too ill to bear much, and that he must not say a word more than was necessary.

"I will only offer prayer," he returned.

I know Mr. Thurston's prayers. I have heard them at funerals when I have been wickedly tempted to wonder whether he were not attempting to fill the interval between us and the return of the lost at the Resurrection.

"I am afraid it will not do," I told him. "You do not realize how feeble she is."

"Then I will only give them the blessing. Perhaps I might talk with Mr. Webbe afterward, or pray with him."

I knew that if this proposition were made to Tom he would say something which would wound the clergyman's feelings.

"Mr. Thurston," I urged, "if you'll pardon me, I wouldn't try to say anything to him just now. He is doing a plucky thing, and a thing that's noble, but it must be terribly hard. I don't think he could endure to have anybody talk to him. He'll have to be left to fight it out for himself."

It was not easy to convince Mr. Thurston, for when once a narrow man gets an idea of duty he can see nothing else; but I managed in the end to save Tom at least the irritation of having to fight off religious appeals. The ceremony was as brief as possible. It was touching to see how humble and yet how proud Julia was. She seemed to feel that Tom was a sort of god in his goodness in marrying her,--and after all perhaps she was partly right. His coldness only made her deprecatory. I wondered how far she was conscious of his evident shrinking from her. He seemed to hate even to touch her fingers. I cannot understand--

April 15. I have had many things to do in the last two days, and I find myself so tired with the stress of it all that I have not felt like writing. It is perhaps as much from a sort of feverish uneasiness as from anything else I have got out my diary to-night. The truth is, that I suffer from the almost intolerable suspense of waiting for Julia to die. Dr. Wentworth and Miss Dyer both are sure there is no chance whatever of her getting well, and I cannot think that it would be better for her, or for Tom, or for her baby--who is to be my baby!--if she should live. We are all a little afraid to say, or even to think, that it is better for a life of this sort to end, and I seem to myself inhuman in putting it down in plain words; but we cannot be rational without knowing that it is better certain persons should be out of the way, for their own sakes as well as for the good of the community, and the more quickly the better. Julia is a weed, poor thing, and the sooner she is pulled up the better for the garden. And yet I pity her so! I can understand religion easily when I think of lives like hers. It is so hard to see the justice of having the weed destroyed for the good of the flowers that men have to invent excuses for the Eternal. Somebody has defined theology as man's justification of a deity found wanting by human standards, and now I realize what this means. Human mercy could not bear to make a Julia, and a power which allows the possibility of such beings has to be excused to human reason. The gods that men invent always turn to Frankensteins on their hands. If there is a conscious power that directs, He must pity the gropings of our race, although I suppose seeing what it is all for and what it all leads to must make it possible to bear the sight of human weakness.

The baby is growing wonderfully attractive now she is so well fed and attended to. I am ashamed to think how little the poor wee morsel attracted me at first. She was so associated with dreadful thoughts, and with things which I hated to know and did not wish to remember, that I shrank from her. Perhaps now the fact that she is to be mine inclines me to look at her with different eyes, but she is really a dear little thing, pretty and sweet. Oh, I will try hard to make her life lovely!

April 16. Aunt Naomi came in last night almost as soon as I was at home. She should not have been out in the night air, I think, for her cold is really severe, and has kept her shut up in the house for a fortnight. She was so eager for news, however, that she could not rest until she had seen me, and I am away all day.

"Well," was her greeting, "I am glad to see you at home once more. I've begun to feel as if you lived down in that little red house."

I said I had pretty nearly lived there for the last two weeks, but that since Miss Dyer came I had been able to get home at night most of the time.

"How do you like going out nursing?" she asked, thrusting her tongue into her cheek in that queer way she has.

I told her I certainly shouldn't think of choosing it as a profession, at least unless I could go to cleaner places.

"I hear you had Hannah clean up," she remarked with a chuckle.

"How did you hear that?" I asked her. "I thought you had been housed with a cold."

Aunt Naomi's smile was broad, and she swung her foot joyously.

"I've had all my faculties," she answered.

"So I should think. You must keep a troop of paid spies."

"I don't need spies. I just keep my eyes and ears open."

I wondered in my heart whether she had heard of the marriage, and as if she read the question in my mind, she answered it.

"I thought I'd like to know one thing, though," she observed with the air of one who candidly concedes that he is not infallible. "I'd like to know how the new Mrs. Webbe takes his marrying her."

"Aunt Naomi," I burst out in astonishment, "you are a witch, and ought to be looked after by the witch-finders."

Aunt Naomi laughed, and her eyes twinkled at the agreeable compliment I paid to her cleverness. Then she suddenly became grave.

"I am not sure, Ruth," she said, "that I should be willing to have your responsibility in making him marry such a girl."

I disclaimed the responsibility entirely, and declared I had not even suggested the marriage. I told her he had done it for the sake of the child, and that the proposition was his, and his only.

She sniffed contemptuously, with an air which seemed to cast doubts on my sanity.

"Very likely he did, and I don't suppose you did suggest it in words; but it's your doing all the same."

"I will not have the responsibility put on me," I protested. "It isn't for me to determine what Tom Webbe shall do."

"You can't help it," was her uncompromising answer. "You can make him do anything you want to."

"Then I wish I were wise enough to know what he ought to do," I could not help crying out. "Oh, Aunt Naomi, I do so want to help him!"

She looked at me with her keen old eyes, to which age has only imparted more sharpness. I should hate to be a criminal brought before her as my judge; her eyes would bring out my guilty secret from the cunningest hiding-place in my soul, and she would sentence me with the utmost rigor of the law. After the sentence had been executed, though, she would come with sharp tongue and gentle hands, and bind up my wounds. Now she did not answer my remark directly, but went on to question me about the Brownrig girl and the details of her illness; only when she went away she stopped to turn at the door and say,--

"The best thing you can do for Tom Webbe is to believe in him. He isn't worth your pity, but your caring what happens to him will do him more good than anything else."

I have been wondering ever since she went how much truth there is in what she said. Tom cannot care so much for me as that, although placed as he is the faith of any woman ought to help him. I know, of course, he is fond of me, and that he was always desperate over my engagement; but I cannot believe the motive power of his life is so closely connected with my opinions as Aunt Naomi seems to think. If it were he would never have been involved at all in this dreadful business. But I do so pity him, and I so wish I might really help him!

April 18. Julia is very low. I have been sitting alone with her this afternoon, almost seeing life fade away from her. Only once was she at all like her old self. I had given her some wine, and she lay for a moment with her great black eyes gleaming out from the hollows into which they have sunk. She seemed to have something on her mind, and at last she put it feebly into words.

"Don't tell her any bad of me," she said.

For an instant I did not understand, and I suppose that my face showed this. She half turned her heavy head on her pillow, so that her glance might go toward the place where the baby slept in the broken clothes-basket. The sadness of it came over me so suddenly and so strongly that tears blinded me. It was the most womanly touch that I have ever known in Julia; and for the moment I was so moved that I could not speak. I leaned over and kissed her, and promised that from me her child should never know harm of its mother.

"She'd be more likely to go to the devil if she knew," Julia explained gaspingly. "Now she'll have some sort of a chance."

The words were coarse, but as they were said they were so pathetic that they pierced me. Poor little baby, born to a tainted heritage! I must save her clean little soul somehow. Poor Julia, she certainly never had any sort of a chance.

April 24. She is in her grave at last, poor girl, and it is sad to think that nobody alive regrets her. Tom cannot, and even her dreadful mother showed no sorrow to-day. Somehow the vulgarity of the mother and her behavior took away half the sadness of the tragedy. When I think about it the very coarseness of it all makes the situation more pathetic, but this is an afterthought that can be felt only when I have beaten down my disgust. When one considers how Julia grew up with this woman, and how she had no way of learning the decencies of life except from a mother who had no conception of them, it makes the heart ache; and yet when Mrs. Brownrig broke in upon us at the graveyard this morning, disgust was the strongest feeling of which I was conscious. The violation of conventionalities always shocks a woman, I suppose, and when it comes to anything so solemn as services over the dead, the lack of decency is shocking and exasperating together, with a little suggestion besides of sacrilege.

Miss Charlotte surprised me by coming over just after breakfast to go to the funeral with me.

"I don't like to have you go alone," she said, "and I knew you would go."

I asked her in some surprise how in the world she knew when the funeral was to be, for we thought that we had kept it entirely quiet.

"Aunt Naomi told me last night," she answered. "I suppose she heard it from some familiar spirit or other,--a black cat, or a toad, or something of the kind."

I could only say that I was completely puzzled to see how Aunt Naomi had discovered the hour in any other way, and I thanked Miss Charlotte for coming, though I told the dear she should not have taken so much trouble.

"I wanted to do it, my dear," she returned cheerfully. "I am getting to be an old thing, and I find funerals rather lively and amusing. Don't you remember Maria Harmon used to say that to a pious soul a funeral was a heavenly picnic?"

Whatever a "heavenly picnic" may be, the funeral this morning was one of the most ghastly things imaginable. Tom and Mr. Thurston were in one carriage and Miss Charlotte and I in another. We went to the graveyard at the Rim, where Julia's father and brother were buried, a place half overgrown with wild-rose and alder bushes. In summer it must be a picturesque tangle of wild shrubs and blossoms, but now it is only chill, and barren, and neglected. The spring has reddened and yellowed the tips of the twigs, but not enough to make the bushes look really alive yet. The heap of clay by the grave, too, was of a hideous ochre tint, and horribly sodden and oozy.

Just as the coffin was being lowered a wild figure suddenly appeared from somewhere behind the thickets of alders and low spruces which skirt the fence on one side. It proved to be old Mrs. Brownrig, who with rags and tags, and even her disheveled gray hair fluttering as she moved, half ran down the path toward us. She must have been hiding in the woods waiting, and I found afterward that she had been seen lurking about yesterday, though for some reason she had not been to her house. Now she had evidently been drinking, and she was a dreadful thing to look at.

I wonder why it is that nature, which makes almost any other ruin picturesque, never succeeds in making the wreck of humanity anything but hideous? An old tower, an old tree, even an old house, has somehow a quality that is prepossessing; but an old man is apt to look unattractive, and an old woman who has given up taking care of herself is repulsive. Perhaps we cannot see humanity with the impartial eyes with which we regard nature, but I do not think this is the whole of it. Somehow and for some reason an inanimate ruin is generally attractive, while a human ruin is ugly.

Mrs. Brownrig seemed to me an incarnation of the repulsive. She made me shudder with some sort of a feeling that she was wicked through and through. Even the pity she made me feel could not prevent my sense that she was vicious. I wanted to wash my hands just for having seen her. I was ashamed to be so uncharitable, and of course it was because she was so hideous to look at; but I do not think I could have borne to have her touch me.

"Stop!" she called out. "I'm the mother of the corpse. Don't you dare to bury her till I get there!"

I glanced at Tom in spite of myself. He had been stern and pale all the morning, not saying a word more than was necessary, but now the color came into his face all at once. I could not bear to see him, and tried to look at the mother, but repulsion and pity made me choke. She was panting with haste and intoxication by the time she reached us, and stumbled over something in the path. She caught at Tom's arm to save herself, and there she hung, leering up into his face.

"You didn't mean for me to come, did you?" she broke out, half whimpering and half chuckling. "She was mine before she was yours. You killed her, too."

Tom kept himself still, though it must have been terribly hard. He must have been in agony, and I could have sobbed to think how he suffered. He grew white as I have never seen him, but he did not look at the old woman. She was perhaps too distracted with drink and I hope with grief to know what she was doing. She turned suddenly, and looked at the coffin, which rested on the edge of the grave.

"My handsome Jule!" she wailed. "Oh, my handsome Jule! They're all dead now! What did you put on her? Did you make a shroud or put on a dress?"

"She has a white shroud," I said quickly. "I saw to everything myself."

She turned to me with a fawning air, and let go her clasp on Tom's arm.

"I'm grateful, Miss Privet," she said. "We Brownrigs ain't much, but we're grateful. I hope you won't let 'em bury my handsome gel till I've seen her," she went on, with a manner pitifully wheedling. "She was my gel before she was anybody else's, and it ain't goin' to hurt nobody for me to see her. I'd like to see that shroud."

How much natural grief, how much vanity, how much maudlin excitement was in her wish, I cannot tell; but manifestly there was nothing to do but to have the coffin opened. When the face of the dead woman had once more been uncovered to the light, the dreadful mother hung over it raving and chuckling. Now she shrieked for her handsome Jule, and wailed in a way that pierced to the marrow; then she would fall to imbecile laughter over the shroud, "just like a lady's,--but then Jule was a lady after she was married." Miss Charlotte, Tom, and I stood apart, while Mr. Thurston tried to get the excited creature away; and the grave-diggers looked on with open curiosity. I could not help thinking how they would tell the story, and of how Tom's name would be bandied about in connection with it. Sometimes I feel as if it were harder to bear the vulgarities of life than actual sorrows. Father used to say that pain is personal, but vulgarity a violation of general principles. This is one of his sayings which I do not feel that I understand entirely, and yet I have some sense of what he meant. A thing which is vulgar seems to fly in the face of all that should be, and outrages our sense of the fitness of things.

Well, somehow we got through it all. It is over, and Julia is in her grave. I cannot but think that it is better if she does not remember; if she has gone out like an ill-burning candle. Nothing is left now but to consider what can be done for the lives that we can reach. I am afraid that the mother is beyond me, but for Tom I can, perhaps, do something. For baby I should do much.

April 25. It is so strange to have a child in the house. I feel queer and disconcerted when I think of it, although things seem to go easily enough. The responsibility of taking charge of a helpless life overwhelms me, and I do not dare to let my thoughts go when they begin to picture possibilities in the future. I wonder that I ever dared to undertake to have baby; and yet her surroundings will be so much better here than with the dreadful Brownrig grandmother that she must surely be better for them. In any case I had to help Tom.

I proposed a permanent nurse for baby, but Hannah and Rosa took up arms at once, and all but upbraided me with having cast doubts on their ability and faithfulness. Surely we three women among us should be able to take care of one morsel, although none of us ever had babies of our own.

April 29. Nothing could be more absurd than the way in which the entire household now revolves about baby. All of us are completely slaves already, although the way in which we show it is naturally different. Rosa has surrendered frankly and without reservations. She sniffed and pouted at the idea of having the child "of that Brownrig creature" in the house. She did not venture to say this to me directly, of course; but she relieved her mind by making remarks to Hannah when I could not help hearing. From the moment baby came, however, Rosa succumbed without a struggle. It is evident she is born with the full maternal instinct, and I see if she does not marry her Dennis, or some more eligible lover, and take herself away before baby is old enough to be much affected, the child will be spoiled to an unlimited extent. As for Hannah, her method of showing her affection is to exhibit the greatest solicitude for baby's spiritual welfare, mingled with the keenest jealousy of Rosa's claims on baby's love. I foresee that I shall have pretty hard work to protect my little daughter from Hannah's well-meant but not very wise theology; and how to do this without hurting the good old soul's feelings may prove no easy problem.

As for myself--of course I love the little, helpless, pink thing; the waif from some outside unknown brought here into a world where everything is made so hard to her from the start. She woke this afternoon, and looked up at me with Tom Webbe's eyes, lying there as sweet and happy as possible, so that I had to kiss and cuddle her, and love her all at once. It is wonderful how a baby comes out of the most dreadful surroundings as a seedling comes out of the mud, so clean and fresh. I said this to Aunt Naomi yesterday, and she sniffed cynically.

"Yes," she answered, "but a weed grows into a weed, no matter how it looks when it is little."

The thought is dreadful to me. I will not believe that because a human being is born out of weakness and wickedness there is no chance for it. The difference, it seems to me, is that every human being has at least the germs of good as well as of bad, and one may be developed as well as the other. Baby must have much that is good and fine from her father, and the thing I have to do is to see to it that the best of her grows, and the worse part dies for want of nourishment. Surely we can do a great deal to aid nature. Perhaps my baby cannot help herself much, at least not for years and years; but if she is kept in an atmosphere which is completely wholesome, whatever is best in her nature must grow strong and crowd down everything less noble.

V

MAY

May 1. Baby is more bewitching every day. She is so wonderful and so lovely that I am never tired of watching her. The miracle of a baby's growth makes one stand speechless in delight and awe. When this little morsel of life, hardly as many days in the world as I have been years, coos and smiles, and stretches out those tiny rosebud fingers only big enough for a fairy, I feel like going down on my knees to the mystery of life. I do not wonder that people pray. I understand entirely the impulse to cry out to something mighty, something higher than our own strength, some sentient heart of nature somewhere; the desire to find, by leaning on the invisible, a relief from the oppressiveness of the emotions we all must feel when a sense of the greatness of life takes hold on us. If it were but possible to believe in any of the many gods that have been offered to us, how glad I should be. Father used to say that every human being really makes a deity for himself, and that the difference between believers and unbelievers is whether they can allow the church to give a name to the god a man has himself created. I cannot accept any name from authority, but the sense of some brooding power is very strong in me when I see this being growing as if out of nothing in my very hands.

When I look at baby I have so great a consciousness of the life outside of us, the life of the universe as a whole, that I am ready to agree with any one who talks of God. The trouble is that one idea of deity seems to me as true and also as inadequate as all the rest; so that in the end I am left with only my overwhelming sense of the mightiness of the mystery of existence and of the unity of all the life in the universe.

May 2. To-day we named baby. I would not do it without consulting her father, so I sent for Tom, and he came over just after breakfast. The day has been warm, and the windows were open; a soft breath of wind came in with a feeling of spring in it, and a faint hint of a summer coming by and by. I was upstairs in the nursery when Tom came; for we have made a genuine, full-fledged nursery of the south chamber, and installed Rosa and the baby there. When they told me that he was here, I took baby, all pink and sweet from her bath, and went down with her.

Tom stood with his back to the parlor door, looking out of the window. He did not hear me until I spoke, and said good-morning. Then he turned quickly. At sight of baby he changed color, and forgot to answer my greeting. He came across the room toward us, so that we met in the middle of the floor.

"Good God, Ruth!" he said. "To think of seeing you with her baby in your arms!"

The words hurt me for myself and for him.

"Tom," I cried out excitedly, "I will not hear you say anything against baby! It is neither hers nor yours now. It is mine, mine! You shall not speak of her as if she were anything but the sweetest, purest thing in the whole world!"

He looked at me so intently and so feelingly while I snuggled the pink ball up to me and kissed it, that it was rather disconcerting. To change the subject, I went straight to the point.

"Tom," I said, "I want to ask you about baby's name."

"Oh, call it anything you like," he answered.

"But you ought to name her," I told him.

He was silent a moment; then he turned and walked away to the window again. I thought that he might be considering the name, but when he came back abruptly he said:--

"Ruth, I can't pretend with you. I haven't any love for that child. I wish it weren't here to remind me of what I would give anything to have forgotten. If I have any feeling for it, it is pity that the poor little wretch had to be chucked into the world, and shame that I should have any responsibility about it."

I told him he would come to love her some time; that she was after all his daughter, and so sweet he couldn't help being fond of her.

"If I ever endure her," he said, almost doggedly, "it will be on your account."

"Nonsense, Tom," I retorted, as briskly as I could when I wanted to cry, "you'll be fond of her because you can't help it. See, she has your eyes, and her hair is going to be like yours."

He laughed with a trace of his old buoyant spirit.

"What idiocy!" was his reply. "Her eyes are any color you like, and she has only about six hairs on her head anyway."

I denied this indignantly, partly because it was not true, and partly, I am afraid, with feminine guile, to divert him. We fell for a moment almost into the oldtime boy-and-girl tone of long ago, and only baby in my arms reminded us of what had come between.

"Well," I said at last, "it is evident that you are not worthy to give this nice little, dear little, superfine little girl a name; so I shall do it myself. I shall call her Thomasine."

"What an outlandish name!"

"It is your own, so you needn't abuse it. Do you agree?"

"I don't see how I can help myself, for you can call her anything you like."

"Of course I shall," I told him; "but I thought you should be consulted."

He shrugged his shoulders with a laugh.

"Having made up your mind," he said, "you ask my advice."

"I shouldn't think of consulting you till I had made up my mind," was my retort. "Now I want you to give her her name."

"Give it to her how?"

"Her name is to be Thomasine," I repeated.

"It is an absurd name," Tom commented.

"That's as it may be," was all I would answer, "but that's what she's to be called. You're to kiss her, and"--

He looked at me with a sudden flush. He had never, I am sure, so much as touched his child with the tip of his finger, much less caressed her. The proposition took him completely by surprise, and evidently disconcerted him. I did not give him time to consider. I made my tone and manner as light as I could, and hurried on.

"You are to kiss her and say, 'I name you Thomasine.' I suppose that really you ought to say 'thee,' but that seems rather theatrical for us plain folk."

He hesitated a second, and then he bent over baby in my arms.

"I name you Thomasine," he said, and just brushed her forehead with his lips. Then he looked at me solemnly. "You will keep her?" he said.

"Yes," I promised.

So baby is named, and Tom must have felt that she belongs really to him, however he may shrink from her.

May 3. I have had a dreadful call from Mrs. Webbe. She came over in the middle of the forenoon, and the moment I saw her determined expression I felt sure something painful was to happen.

"Good-morning," she said abruptly; "I have come after my son's infant."

"What?" I responded, my wits scattering like chickens before a hawk.

"I have come after my son's infant," she repeated. "We are obliged to you for taking care of it; but I won't trouble you with it any longer."

I told her I was to keep baby always. She looked at me with tightening lips.

"I don't want to have disagreeable words with you, Ruth," she said, "but you must know we could never allow such a thing."

I asked her why.

"You must know," she said, "you are not fit to be trusted with an immortal soul."

I fear that I unmeaningly let the shadow of a smile show as I said,--

"But baby is so young"--

"This is no laughing matter," she interrupted with asperity, "even if the child is young. I must do my duty to her from the very beginning. Of course it will be a cross for me, but I hope I shall bear it like a Christian."

Something in her voice and manner exasperated me almost beyond endurance. I could not help remembering the day Mrs. Webbe came to the Brownrig house, and I am much afraid I was anything but conciliatory in my tone when I answered.

"Mrs. Webbe," I said to her, "if you cared for baby, and wanted to love her, I might perhaps think of giving her up, though I am very fond of her, dear little thing."

Mrs. Webbe's keen black eyes snapped at me.

"I dare say you look at it in that way," she retorted. "That's just it. It's just the sort of worldliness that would ruin the child. It's come into the world with sin and shame enough to bear, and you'd never help it to grace to bear it."

The words were not entirely clear, yet I had little doubt of their meaning. The baby, however, was after all her own flesh and blood, and I was secretly glad that to strengthen me in my resolve to keep Thomasine I had my promise to the dead mother and to Tom.

"But, Mrs. Webbe," I said as gently as I could, "don't you think the fact that baby has no mother, and must bear that, will make her need love more?"

"She'll need bracing up," was the emphatic rejoinder, "and that's just what she won't get here. I don't want her. It's a cross for me to look at her, and realize we've got to own a brat with Brownrig blood in her. I'm only trying to do my duty. Where's that baby going to get any religious training from you, Ruth Privet?"

I sat quiet a moment, thinking what I had better say. Mrs. Webbe was entirely conscientious about it all. She did not, I was sure, want baby, and she was sincere in saying that she was only trying to do her duty. When I thought of Thomasine, however, as being made to serve as a living and visible cross for the good of Mrs. Webbe's soul, I could not bear it. Driven by that strong will over the thorny paths of her grandmother's theology, poor baby would be more likely to be brought to despair than to glory. It was of course right for Mrs. Webbe to wish to take baby, but it could not be right for me to permit her to do so. If my duty clashed with hers, I could not change on that account; but I wished to be as conciliatory as possible.

"Don't you think, Mrs. Webbe," I asked, trying to look as sunny as a June day, "that baby is rather young to get harm from me or my heresies? Couldn't the whole matter at least be left till she is old enough to know the meaning of words?"

She looked at me with more determination than ever.

"Well, of course it's handsome of you to be willing to take care of Tom's baby, and of course you won't mind the expense; but you made him marry that girl, so it's only fair you should expect to take some of the trouble that's come of what you did."

"You don't mean," I burst out before I thought, "that you wouldn't have had Tom marry her?"

"It's no matter now, as long as she didn't live," Mrs. Webbe answered; "though it isn't pleasant knowing that one of that Brownrig tribe married into our family."

I had nothing to say. It would have hurt my pride, of course, had one of my kin made such a marriage, and I cannot help some secret feeling that Julia had forfeited her right to be treated like an honest girl; but there was baby to be considered. Besides this, the marriage was made, it seems to me, by Tom's taking the girl, not by the service at her deathbed. Mrs. Webbe and I sat for a time without words. I looked at the carpet, and was conscious that Mrs. Webbe looked at me. She is not a pleasant woman, and I have had times of wishing she might be carried off by a whirlwind, so that Deacon Webbe and Tom might have a little peace; but I believe in her way she tries to be a good one. The trouble is that her way of being good seems to me to be a great deal more vicious than most kinds of wickedness. She uses her religion like a tomahawk, and whacks with it right and left.

"Look here," she broke out at last, "I don't want to be unpleasant, but it ain't a pleasant thing for me to come here anyway. I suppose you mean to be kind, but you'd be soft with baby. That's just what she mustn't have. She'd better be made to know from the very start what's before her."

"What is before her?" I asked.

Mrs. Webbe flushed.

"I don't know as there's any use of my telling you if you don't see it yourself. She's got to fight her way through life against her inheritance from that mother of hers, and--and her father."

She choked a little, and I could not help laying my hand on hers, just to show that I understood. She drew herself away, not unkindly, I believe, but because she is too proud to endure pity.

"She's got to be hardened," she went on, her tone itself hardening as she spoke. "From her cradle she's got to be set to fight the sin that's in her."

I could not argue. I respected the sternness of her resolve to do her duty, and I knew that she was sacrificing much. Every smallest sight of the child would be an hourly, stinging humiliation to her pride, and perhaps, too, to her love. In her fierce way she must love Tom, so that his shame would hurt her terribly. Yet I could not give up my little soft, pink baby to live in an atmosphere of disapproval and to be disciplined in the rigors of a pitiless creed. That, I am sure, would never save her. Tom Webbe is a sufficient answer to his mother's argument, if she could only see it. If anything is to rescue Thomasine from the disastrous consequences of an unhappy heritage, it must be just pure love and friendliness.

"Mrs. Webbe," I said, as firmly as I could, "I think I know how you feel; but in any case I could not give up baby until I had seen Tom."

A deeper flush came over the thin face, and a look which made me turn my eyes away, because I knew she would not wish me to see the pain and humiliation which it meant.

"Tom," she began, "Tom! He"--She broke off abruptly, and, rising, began to gather her shawl about her. "Then you refuse to let me have her?" she ended.

"The baby's father should have something to say in the matter, it seems to me," I told her.

"He has already decided," she replied sternly, "and decided against the child's good. He wants her to stay with you. I suppose," she added, and I must say that her tone took a suggestion of spite, "he thinks you'll get so interested in the baby as sometime"--

She did not finish, perhaps because I gave her a look, which, if it expressed half I felt, might well silence her. She moved quickly toward the door, and tightened her shawl with an air of virtuous determination.

"Well," she observed, "I have done my duty by the child. What the Lord let it live for is a mystery to me."

She said not another word, not even of leave-taking, but strode away with something of the air of a brisk little prophetess who has pronounced the doom of heaven on the unrighteous. It is a pity such people will make of religion an excuse for taking themselves so seriously. All the teachings of theology Mrs. Webbe turns into justifications of her prejudices and her hardness. The very thought of Thomasine under her rigorous rule makes me shiver. I wonder how her husband has endured it all these years. Saintship used to be won by making life as disagreeable as possible for one's self; but nowadays life is made sufficiently hard by others. If living with his wife peacefully, forbearingly, decorously, does not entitle Deacon Webbe to be considered a saint, it is time that new principles of canonization were adopted.

Heavens! What uncharitableness I am running into myself!

May 4. I told Aunt Naomi of Mrs. Webbe's visit, and her comments were pungent enough. It is wicked, perhaps, to set them down, but I have a vicious joy in doing it.

"Of course she'd hate to have the baby," Aunt Naomi declared, "but she'd more than get even by the amount of satisfaction she'd get nagging at it. She's worn Deacon Daniel till he's callous, so there can't be much fun rasping him, and Tom won't listen to her. She wants somebody to bully, and that baby'd just suit her. She could make it miserable and get in side digs at its father at the same time."

"You are pretty severe, Aunt Naomi," I said; "but I know you don't mean it. As for troubling Tom, he says he doesn't care for baby."

"Pooh! He's soft-hearted like his father; and even if he didn't care for his own child, which is nonsense anyway, he'd be miserable to see any child go through what he's been through himself with that woman."

It is useless to attempt to stay Aunt Naomi when once she begins to talk about Mrs. Webbe, and she has so much truth in her favor I am never able successfully to urge the other side of the case so as to get for Mrs. Webbe any just measure of fair play. To-night I almost thought that Aunt Naomi would devour her green veil in the energy with which she freed her mind. The thing which she cannot see is that Mrs. Webbe is entirely blind to her own faults. Mrs. Webbe would doubtless be amazed if she could really appreciate that she is unkind to Deacon Daniel and to Tom. She acts her nature, and simply does not think. I dare say most of us might be as bad if we had her disposition.--Which tags on at the end of the nasty things I have been writing like a piece of pure cant!

May 6. It certainly would seem on the face of it that a woman alone in the world as I am, of an age when I ought to have the power of managing my own affairs, and with the means of getting on without asking financial aid, might take into her house a poor, helpless, little baby if she wished. Apparently there is a conspiracy to prevent my doing anything of the sort. Cousin Mehitable has now entered her protest, and declares that if I do not give up what she calls my mad scheme she shall feel it her duty to have me taken in charge as a lunatic. She wants to know whether I have no decency about having a bachelor's baby in the house, although she is perfectly well aware that Tom was married. She reminds me that she expects me to go to Europe with her in about a month, and asks whether I propose to leave Thomasine in a foundling hospital or a day nursery while I am gone. Her letter is one breathless rush of indignation from beginning to end, so funnily like her that with all my indignation I could hardly read it for laughing.

I confess it is hard to give up the trip abroad. I was only half aware how I have been counting on it until now I am brought face to face with the impossibility of carrying out the plan. I have almost unconsciously been piecing together in my mind memories of the old days in Europe, with delight in thinking of seeing again places which enchanted me. Any one, I suppose, who has been abroad enough to taste the charm of travel, but who has not worn off the pleasure by traveling too much, must have moments of longing to get back. I have had the oddest, sudden pangs of homesickness when I have picked up a photograph or opened a magazine to a picture of some beautiful place across the ocean. The smallest things can bring up the feeling,--the sound of the wind in the trees as I heard it once when driving through the Black Forest, the sun on a stone wall as it lay in Capri, the sky as it looked at one place, or the grass as I saw it at another. I remember how once a white feather lying on the turf of the lawn brought up the courtyard of Warwick Castle as if a curtain had lifted suddenly; and always these flashing reminders of the other side of the world have made me feel as if I must at once hurry across the ocean again. Now I have let myself believe I was really going, and to give it up is very hard.

It is perhaps making too much of it to be so disappointed. Certainly baby must be taken care of, and I have promised to take care of her. I fear that it will be a good while before I see Europe again. I am sorry for Cousin Mehitable, but she has never any difficulty in finding friends to travel with. It is evident enough that my duty is here.

May 10. Rosa has not yet come to the end of her matrimonial perplexities. The divorced wife of Ran Gargan is now reported as near death, and Rosa is debating whether to give up Dennis Maloney and wait for Ran.

"Of course Dennis is gone on me," she explained last night in the most cold-bloodedly matter-of-fact fashion, "and I'd make him a main good wife. But Ran was always the boy for me, barring Father O'Rafferty wouldn't let me marry him."

"Rosa," I said, with all the severity I could command, "you must not talk like that. It sounds as if you hadn't any feeling at all. You don't mean it."

Rosa tossed her saucy head with emphatic scorn.

"What for don't I mean it?" she demanded. "Any woman wants to marry the man she likes best, and, barring him, she'd take up with the man who likes her best."

I laughed, and told her she was getting to be a good deal of a philosopher.

"Humph!" was her not very respectful reply; "it's the only choice a woman has, and she don't always have that. She's better off if she'll take the man that's sweet on her; but it's the way we girls are made, to hanker after the one we're sweet on ourselves."

Her earnestness so much interfered with the supper which she was giving to Thomasine that I took baby into my arms, and left Rosa free to speak out her mind without hindrance.

"I'm not going to take either of 'em in a hurry," she went on. "I'd not be leaving you in the lurch with the baby, Miss Ruth. I'd like to have Ran, but I don't know what he's got. He'd make me stand round awful, they say, and Dennis'd be under my thumb like a crumb of butter. I mistrust I'd be more contented with Ranny. It'd be more stirred up like; but I'd have some natural fear of him, and that's pleasant for a woman."

I had never seen Rosa in this astonishing mood before, and so much worldly wisdom was bewildering. Such generalizations on the relation of the sexes took away my breath. I was forced to be silent, for there was evidently no chance of my holding my own in a conversation of this sort. It is strange how boldly and bluntly this uneducated girl has thought out her relations with her lovers. She recognizes entirely that Dennis, who is her slave, will treat her better than Ran, who will be her master; yet she "mistrusts she will be more contented with Ranny." The moral seems to be that a woman is happier to be abused by the man she loves than to be served by the man who loves her. That can only be crude instinct, the relics of savagery. In civilized woman, I am sure, when respect goes love must go also.

No; that isn't true! Women keep on loving men when they know them to be unworthy. Perhaps this applies especially to good wives. A good woman is bound to love her husband just as long as she can in any way compass it, and to deceive herself about him to the latest possible instant. I wonder what I should do? I wonder--Well, George has shown that he is not what I thought him, and do I care for him less? He only showed, however, that he did not care for me as much as I thought, and of course that does not necessarily prove him unworthy. And yet--

What is the use of all this? What do I know about it anyway? I will go to bed.

May 12. It is amusing to see how jealous Hannah and Rosa are of baby's attention. Thomasine can as yet hardly be supposed to distinguish one human being from another, and very likely has not drawn very accurate comparisons between any of us and the furniture; but Rosa insists that baby knows her, and is far more fond of her than of Hannah, while of course Hannah indignantly sniffs at an idea so preposterous.

"She really laughed at me this morning when I was giving her her bath," Rosa assured me to-day. "She knows me the minute I come into the nursery."

It is beautiful to see how the sweetness and helplessness of the little thing have so appealed to the girls that prejudices are forgotten. When I brought Thomasine home I feared that I might have trouble. They scorned the child of that Brownrig girl, and they both showed the fierce contempt which good girls of their class feel for one who disgraces herself. All this is utterly forgotten. The charm of baby has so enslaved them that if an outsider ventured to show the feelings they themselves had at first, they would be full of wrath and indignation. The maternal instinct is after all the strongest thing in most women. Rosa considers her matrimonial chances in a bargain-and-sale fashion which takes my breath, but she will be perfectly fierce in her fondness for her children. Hannah is a born old maid, but she cannot help mothering every baby who comes within her reach, and for Thomasine she brings out all the sweetness of her nature.

May 15. I have been through a whirlwind, but now I am calm, and can think of things quietly. It is late, but the fire has not burned down, and I could not sleep, so Peter and I may as well stay where we are a while longer.

I was reading this afternoon, when suddenly Kathie rushed into the room out of breath with running, her face smooched and wet with tears, and her hair in confusion.

"Why, Kathie," I asked, "what is the matter?"

Her answer was to fly across the room, throw herself on her knees beside me, and burst into sobs. The more I tried to soothe her, the more she cried, and it was a long time before she was quiet enough to be at all reasonable.

"My dear," I said, "tell me what has happened. What is the matter?"

She looked up at me with wild eyes.

"It isn't true!" she broke out fiercely. "I know it isn't true! I didn't say a word to him, because I knew you wouldn't want me to; but it's a lie! It's a lie, if my father did say it."

"Why, Kathie," I said, amazed at her excitement, "what in the world are you saying? Your father wouldn't tell a lie to save his life."

"He believes it," she answered, dropping her voice. A sullen, stubborn look came into her face that it was pitiful to see. "He does believe it, but it's a lie."

I spoke to her as sternly as I could, and told her she had no right to judge of what her father believed, and that I would not have her talk so of him.

"But I asked him about your mother, and he said she would be punished forever and ever for not being a church member!" she exclaimed before I could stop her. "And I know it's a lie."

She burst into another tempest of sobs, and cried until she was exhausted. Her words were so cruel that for a moment I had not even the power to try to comfort her; but she would soon have been in hysterics, and for a time I had to think only of her. Fortunately baby woke. Rosa was not at home, and by the time Hannah and I had fed Thomasine, and once more she was asleep in her cradle, I had my wits about me. Kathie had, with a child's quick change of mood, become almost gay.

"Kathie," I said, "do you mind staying here with baby while I take a little walk? Rosa is out, and I have been in the house all day. I want a breath of fresh air."

"Oh, I should love to," she answered, her face brightening at the thought of being trusted with a responsibility so great.

I was out of doors, and walking rapidly toward Mr. Thurston's house, before I really came to my senses. I was so wounded by what Kathie had thoughtlessly repeated, so indignant at this outrage to my dead, that I had had strength only to hide my feelings from her. Now I came to a realization of my anger, and asked myself what I meant to do. I had instinctively started out to denounce Mr. Thurston for bigotry and cruelty; to protest against this sacrilege. A little, I feel sure,--at least I hope I am right,--I felt the harm he was doing Kathie; but most I was outraged and angry that he had dared to speak so of Mother. I was ashamed of my rage when I grew more composed; and I realized all at once how Mother herself would have smiled at me. So clear was my sense of her that it was almost as if she really repeated what she once said to me: "My dear Ruth, do you suppose that what Mr. Thurston thinks alters the way the universe is made? Why should he know more about it than you do? He's not nearly so clever or so well educated." I smiled to recall how she had smiled when she said it; then I was blinded by tears to remember that I should never see her smile again; and so I walked into a tree in the sidewalk, and nearly broke my nose. That was the end of my dashing madly at Mr. Thurston. The wound Kathie's words had made throbbed, but with the memory of Mother in my mind I could not break out into anger.

I turned down the Cove Road to walk off my ill-temper. After all Mr. Thurston was right from his point of view. He could not believe without feeling that he had to warn Kathie against the awful risk of running into eternal damnation. It must hurt him to think or to say such a thing; but he believes in the cruelty of the deity, and he has beaten his natural tenderness into subjection to his idea of a Moloch. It is so strange that the ghastly absurdity of connecting God's anger with a sweet and blameless life like Mother's does not strike him. Indeed, I suppose down here in the country we are half a century or so behind the thought of the real world, and that Mr. Thurston's creed would be impossible in the city, or among thinkers even of his own denomination. At least I hope so, though I do not see what they have left in the orthodox creed if they take eternal punishment out of it.

The fresh air and the memory of Mother, with a little common sense, brought me right again. I walked until I had myself properly in hand, and till I hoped that the trace of tears on my face might pass for the effect of the wind. It was growing dusk by this time, and the lamps began to appear in the houses as I came to Mr. Thurston's at last. I slipped in at the front door as quietly as I could, and knocked at the study.

Mr. Thurston himself opened the door. He looked surprised, but asked me in, and offered me a chair. He had been writing, and still held his pen in his hand; the study smelled of kerosene lamp and air-tight stove. Poor man! Theology which has to live by an air-tight stove must be dreary. If he had an open fire on his hearth, he might have less in his religion.

"I have come to confess a fault, Mr. Thurston," I said, "and to ask a favor."

He smiled a little watery smile, and put down his pen.

"Is the favor to be a reward for the fault or for confessing it?" he asked.

I was so much surprised by this mild jest, coming from him, that I almost forgot my errand. I smiled back at him, and forgot the bitterness that had been in my heart. He looked so thin, so bloodless, that it was impossible to have rancor.

"I left Kathie with baby while I went for a walk," I said, "and I have stayed away longer than I intended. I forgot to tell her she could call Hannah if she wanted to come home, and she is too conscientious to leave, so I am afraid that she has stayed all this time. I wanted you to know it is my fault."

"I am glad for her to be useful," her father said, "especially as you have been so kind to her."

"Then you will perhaps let her stay all night," I went on. "I can take over her night-things. I promised to show her about making a new kind of pincushion for the church fair; and I could do it this evening. Besides, it is lonely for me in that great house."

I felt like a hypocrite when I said this, though it is true enough. He looked at me kindly, and even pityingly.

"Yes," he returned, "I can understand that. If you think she won't trouble you, and"--

I did not give him opportunity for a word more. I rose at once and held out my hand.

"Thank you so much," I said. "I'll find Mrs. Thurston, and get Kathie's things. I beg your pardon for troubling you."

I was out of the study before he could reconsider. Across the hall I found his wife in the sitting-room with another air-tight stove, and looking thinner and paler than he. She had a great pile of sewing beside her, and her eyes looked as if months of tears were behind them, aching to be shed.

I told her Mr. Thurston had given leave for Kathie to pass the night with me, and I had come for her night-things. She looked surprised, but none the less pleased. While she was out of the room I looked cautiously at the mending to see if the clothing was too worn for her to be willing that I should see it. When she came in with her little bundle, I said, as indifferently as I could, "I suppose if Kathie were at home she would help you with the mending, so I'll take her share with me, and we'll do it together." Of course she remonstrated, but I managed to bring away a good part of the big pile, and now it is all done. Poor Mrs. Thurston, she looked so tired, so beaten down by life, the veins were so blue on her thin temples! If I dared, I'd go every week and do that awful mending for her. I must get Kathie to smuggle some of it over now and then. When we blame these people for the narrowness of their theology, we forget their lives are so constrained and straitened that they cannot take broad views of anything. The man or woman who could take a wide outlook upon life from behind an air-tight stove in a half-starved home would have to be almost a miracle. It is wonderful that so much sweetness and humanity keep alive where circumstances are so discouraging. When I think of patient, faithful, hard-working women like Mrs. Thurston, uncomplaining and devoted, I am filled with admiration and humility. If their theology is narrow, they endure it; and, after all, men have made it for them. Father said once women had always been the occasion of theology, but had never produced any. I asked him, I remember, whether he said this to their praise or discredit, and he answered that what was entirely the result of nature was neither to be praised nor to be blamed; women were so made that they must have a religion, and men so constituted as to take the greatest possible satisfaction in inventing one. "It is simply a beautiful example," he added, with his wonderful smile which just curled the corners of his mouth, "of the law of supply and demand."

I am running on and on, although it is so late at night. Aunt Naomi, I presume, will in some occult way know about it, and ask me why I sat up so long. I am tired, but the excitement of the afternoon is not all gone. That any one in the world should believe it possible for Mother to be unhappy in another life, to be punished, is amazing! Surely a man whose theology makes such an idea conceivable is profoundly to be pitied.

May 19. Hannah is perfectly delightful about Tomine. She hardly lets a day go by without admonishing me not to spoil baby, and yet she is herself an abject slave to the slightest caprice of the tyrannous small person. We have to-night been having a sort of battle royal over baby's going to sleep by herself in the dark. I made up my mind the time had come when some semblance of discipline must be begun, and I supposed, of course, that Hannah would approve and assist. To my surprise she failed me at the very first ditch.

"I am going to put Tomine into the crib," I announced, "and take away the light. She must learn to go to sleep in the dark."

"She'll be frightened," Rosa objected.

"She's too little to know anything about being afraid," I retorted loftily, although I had secretly a good deal of misgiving.

"Too little!" sniffed Hannah. "She's too little not to be afraid."

I saw at a glance that I had before me a struggle with them as well as with baby.

"Children are not afraid of the dark until they are told to be," I declared as dogmatically as possible.

"They are told not to be," objected Rosa.

"But that puts the idea into their heads," was my answer.

Hannah regarded me with evident disapprobation.

"But supposing the baby cries?" she demanded.

"Then she must be left to stop," I answered, with outward firmness and inward quakings.

"But suppose she cries herself sick?" insisted Rosa.

"She won't. She'll just cry a little till she finds nobody comes, and then she'll go to sleep."

The two girls regarded me with looks that spoke disapproval in the largest of capitals. It is so seldom they are entirely united that it was disconcerting to have them thus make common cause against me, but I had to keep up for the sake of dignity if for nothing else. Thomasine was fed and arranged for the night; she was kissed and cuddled, and tucked into her crib. Then I got Hannah and Rosa, both protesting they didn't mind sitting up with the darling all night, out of the room, darkened the windows, and shut baby in alone for the first time in her whole life, a life still so pathetically little.

I closed the nursery door with an air of great calmness and determination, but outside I lingered like a complete coward. The girls were glowering darkly from the end of the hall, and we needed only candlelight to look like three bloodthirsty conspirators. For two or three minutes there was a soothing and deceptive silence, so that I turned to smile with an air of superior wisdom on the maids. Then without warning baby uplifted her voice and wailed.

There was something most disconcertingly explosive about the cry, as if Thomasine had been holding her breath until she were black in the face, and only let it escape one second short of actual suffocation. I jumped as if a mouse had sprung into my face, and the two girls swooped down upon me in a whirl of triumphant indignation.

"There, Miss Ruth!" cried Hannah.

"There, Miss Privet!" cried Rosa.

"Well," I said defensively; "I expected her to cry some."

"She wants to be walked with, poor little thing," Rosa said incautiously.

I was rejoiced to have a chance to turn the tables, and I sprang upon her tacit admission at once.

"Rosa," I said severely, "have you been walking Thomasine to sleep? I told you never to do it."

Rosa, self-convicted, could only murmur that she had just taken her up and down two or three times to make her sleepy; she hadn't really walked her to sleep.

"What if she had?" Hannah demanded boldly, her place entirely forgotten in the excitement of the moment. "If babies like to be walked to sleep, it stands to reason that's nature."

I began to feel as if all authority were fast slipping away from me, and that I should at this rate soon become a very secondary person in my own house. I tried to recover myself by assuming the most severe air of which I was capable.

"You must not talk outside the nursery door," I told them. "If Thomasine hears voices, of course she'll keep on crying. Go downstairs, both of you. I'll see to baby."

They had not yet arrived at open mutiny, and so with manifest unwillingness they departed, grumbling to each other as they went. Baby seemed to have some superhuman intelligence that her firmest allies were being routed, for she set up a series of nerve-splitting shrieks which made every fibre of my body quiver. As soon as the girls were out of sight I flopped down on my knees outside of the door, and put my hands over my ears. I was afraid of myself, and only the need I felt of holding out for Tomine's own sake gave me strength to keep from rushing into the nursery in abject surrender.

The absurdity of it makes me laugh now, but with the shrieks of baby piercing me, I felt as if I were involved in a tragedy of the deepest dye. I think I was never so near hysterics in my life; but I had even then some faint and far-away sense of how ridiculous I was, and that saved me. Thomasine yelled like a young tornado, and every cry went through me like a knife. I was on my knees on the floor, pouring out tears like a watering-pot, trying to shut out the sound. There is something in a baby's cry that is too much even for a sense of humor; and no woman could have heard it without being overcome.

I had so stopped my ears that although I could not shut out baby's cries entirely I did not hear Hannah and Rosa when they came skulking back. The first I knew of their being behind me was when Hannah, in a whispered bellow, shouted into my ear that baby would cry herself into convulsions. Demoralized as I was already, I almost yielded; I started to my feet, and faced them in a tragic manner, ready to give up everything. I was ready to say that Rosa might walk up and down with Tomine every night for the rest of her life. Fortunately some few gleams of common sense asserted themselves in my half-addled pate, and instead of opening the door, I spread out my arms, and without a word shooed the girls out of the corridor as if they were hens. Then the ludicrousness of it came over me, and although I still tingled with baby's wailing, I could appreciate that the cries were more angry than pathetic, and that we must fight the battle through now it had been begun. The drollest thing about it all was that it seemed almost as if the willful little lady inside there had some uncanny perception of my thought. I had no sooner got the girls downstairs again, and made up my mind to hold out than she stopped crying; and when we crept cautiously in ten minutes after, she was asleep as soundly and as sweetly as ever.

But I feel as if I had been through battles, murders, and sudden deaths.

May 20. Baby to-night cried two or three minutes, but her ladyship evidently had the sense to see that crying is a painful and useless exercise when she has to deal with such a hard-hearted tyrant as I am, and she quickly gave it up. Rosa hoped pointedly that the poor little thing's will isn't broken, and Hannah observed piously that she trusted I realized we all of us had to be treated like babies by our Heavenly Father. I was tempted to ask her if our Heavenly Father never left us to cry in the dark. If we could be as firm with ourselves as we can be with other people, what an improvement it would be. I wonder what Tom would think of my first conflict with his baby.

May 25. I went to-day to call on Mrs. Weston. Although I am in mourning, I thought it better to go. I feared lest she should think my old relations to George might have something to do with my staying away.

It was far less difficult than I thought it would be. I may be frank in my diary, I suppose, and say I found her silly and rather vulgar, and I wonder how George can help seeing it. She was inclined to boast a little that all the best people in town had called.

"Olivia Watson acted real queer about my wedding-calls," she said. "She doesn't seem to know the rich folks very well."

"Oh, we never make distinctions in Tuskamuck by money," I put in; but she went on without heeding.

"Olivia said Mrs. Andrews--she called her Lady Andrews, just as if she was English."

"It is a way we have," I returned. "I'm sure I don't know how it began. Very likely it is only because it fits her so well."

"Well, anyway, she called; and Olivia owned she'd never been to see them. I could see she was real jealous, though she wouldn't own it."

"Old lady Andrews is a delightful person," I remarked awkwardly, feeling that I must say something.

"I didn't think she was much till Olivia told me," returned Mrs. Weston, with amazing frankness. "I thought she was a funny old thing."

It is not kind to put this down, I know; but I really would like to see if it sounds so unreal when it is written as it did when it was said. It was so unlike anything I ever heard that it seemed almost as if Mrs. Weston were playing a part, and trying to cheat me into thinking her more vulgar and more simple than she is. I am afraid I shall not lessen my unpleasant impression, however, by keeping her words.

Mrs. Weston talked, too, about George and his devotion as if she expected me to be hurt. Possibly I was a little; although if I were, it was chiefly because my vanity suffered that he should find me inferior in attraction to a woman like this. I believe I am sincerely glad that he should prove his fondness for his wife. Indeed fondness could be the only excuse for his leaving me, and I do wish happiness to them both.

I fear what I have written gives the worst of Mrs. Weston. She perhaps was a little embarrassed, but she showed me nothing better. She is not a lady, and I see perfectly that she will drop out of our circle. We are a little Cranfordish here, I suppose, but anywhere in the world people come in the long run to associate with their own kind. Mrs. Weston is not our kind; and even if this did not affect our attitude, she would herself tire of us after the first novelty is worn off.

May 26. George came in this morning on business, and before he went he thanked me for calling on his wife.

"I shouldn't have made a wedding-call just now on anybody else," I told him; "but your association with Father and the way in which we have known you of course make a difference."

He showed some embarrassment, but apparently--at least so I thought--he was so anxious to know what I thought of Mrs. Weston that he could not drop the subject.

"Gertrude isn't bookish," he remarked rather confusedly. "I hope you found things to talk about."

"Meaning that I can talk of nothing but books?" I returned. "Poor George, how I must have bored you in times past."

He flushed and grew more confused still.

"Of course you know I didn't mean anything like that," he protested.

I laughed at his grave face, and then I was so glad to find I could talk to him about his wife without feeling awkward that I laughed again. He looked so puzzled I was ready to laugh in turn at him, but I restrained myself. I could not understand my good spirits, and for that matter I do not now. Somehow my call of yesterday seems to have made a difference in my feeling toward George. Just how or just what I cannot fully make out. I certainly have not ceased to care about him. I am still fond of the George I have known for so many years; but somehow the husband of Mrs. Weston does not seem to be the same man. The George Weston who can love this woman and be in sympathy with her is so different from anything I have known or imagined the old George to be that he affects me as a stranger.

The truth is I have for the past month been in the midst of things so serious that my own affairs and feelings have ceased to appear of so much importance. When death comes near enough for us to see it face to face, we have a better appreciation of values, and find things strangely altered. I have had, moreover, little time to think about myself, which is always a good thing; and to my surprise I find now that I am not able to pity myself nearly as much as I did.

This seems perhaps a little disloyal to George. My feeling for him cannot have evaporated like dew drying from the grass. At least I am sure that I am still ready to serve him to the very best of my ability.

VI

JUNE

June 1. Cousin Mehitable is capable of surprises. She has written to Deacon Richards to have my baby taken away from me.

The Deacon came in to-night, so amused that he was on the broad grin when he presented himself, and chuckling even when he said good-evening.

"What pleases you?" I asked. "You seem much amused about something."

"I am," he answered. "I've been appointed your guardian."

"By the town authorities?" I demanded. "I should have thought I was old enough to look after myself."

"It's your family," he chuckled. "Miss Privet has written to me from Boston."

"Cousin Mehitable?" I exclaimed.

"Miss Mehitable Privet," he returned.

"She has written to you about me?" asked I.

He nodded, in evident delight over the situation.

My astonishment got the better of my manners so that I forgot to ask him to sit down, but stood staring at him like a booby. I remembered Cousin Mehitable had met him once or twice on her infrequent visits to Tuskamuck, and had been graciously pleased to approve of him,--largely, I believe, on account of some accidental discovery of his very satisfactory pedigree. That she should write to him, however, was most surprising, and argued an amount of feeling on her part much greater than I had appreciated. I knew she would be shocked and perhaps scandalized by my having baby, and she had written to me with sufficient emphasis, but I did not suppose she would invoke outside aid in her attempts to dispossess me of Thomasine.

"But why should she write to you?" I asked Deacon Daniel.

"She said," was his answer, "she didn't know who else to write to."

"But what did she expect you to do?"

The Deacon chuckled and caressed his beardless chin with a characteristic gesture. When he is greatly amused he seizes himself by the chin as if he must keep his jaw stiff or an undeaconical laugh would come out in spite of him.

"I don't think she cared much what I did if I relieved you of that baby," was his reply. "She said if I was any sort of a guardian of the poor perhaps I could put it in a home."

"But you are not," I said.

"No," he assented.

"And you shouldn't have her if you were," I added.

"I don't want the child," Deacon Daniel returned. "I shouldn't know what to do with it."

Then we both laughed, and I got him seated in Father's chair, and we had a long chat over the whole situation. I had not realized how much I wanted to talk matters over with somebody. Aunt Naomi is out of the question, because she is so fond of telling things; Miss Charlotte would be better, but she is not very worldly wise; and if I may tell the truth, I wanted to talk with a man. The advice of women is wise often, and yet more often it is comforting; but it has somehow not the conclusiveness of the decision of a sensible man. At least that is the way I felt to-night, though in many matters I should never think of trusting to a man's judgment.

"I think I shall adopt baby legally," I said. "Then nobody could take her away or bother me about her."

He asked me if her father would agree, and I said that I was sure he would.

"It would make her your heir if you died without a will," he commented.

I said that nothing was more easy than to make a will, and of course I should mean to provide for her.

"You are not afraid of wills, then?" Deacon Daniel observed, looking at me curiously. "So many folks can't bear the idea of making one."

"Very likely it's partly because I am a lawyer's daughter," I said; "but in any case making a will wouldn't have any more terrors for me than writing a check. But then I never had any fear of death anyway."

Deacon Daniel regarded me yet more intently, clasping his great white hands over his knee.

"I never can quite make you out, Miss Ruth," he said after a little. "You haven't any belief in a hereafter that I know of, but you seem to have no trouble about it."

I asked him why I should have, and he answered that most people do.

"Perhaps that is because they feel a responsibility about the future that I don't," I returned. "I don't think I can alter what is to come after death, and I don't see what possible good I can do by fretting about it. Father brought me up, you know, to feel that I had all I could attend to in making the best I can of this life, without wasting my strength in speculating about another. In any case I can't see why I should be any more afraid of death than I am of sleep. I understand one as well as I do the other."

He looked at the rug thoughtfully a moment, and then, as if he declined to be drawn into an argument, he came back to the original subject of our talk.

"Would Tom Webbe want to have anything to do with the child?" he asked.

"I think he would rather forget she is in the world," I told him. "By and by he may be fond of her, but now he tries not to think of her at all. I want to make her so attractive and lovely he can't help caring for her."

"But then she will care for him," the Deacon commented.

"Why, of course she will. That is what I hope. Then she might influence him, and help him."

"You are willing to share her with her father even if you do adopt her?" he asked.

I did not understand his manner, but I told him I did not think I had any right to deprive her of her father's affection or him of hers if I adopted her a dozen times over.

The Deacon made no answer. His face was graver, and for some time we sat without further word.

"Tom Webbe isn't as bad as he seems, Miss Ruth," Deacon Daniel said at length. "If you had to live with his mother, I guess you'd be ready to excuse him for 'most anything. His father never had the spunk to say boo to a goose, and Mrs. Webbe has bullied him from the time we were boys. He's as good as a man can be, but it's a pity he don't carry out Paul's idea of being ruler in his own house."

"Paul was a bachelor like you, Deacon Daniel," I answered, rather saucily; "and neither of you knows anything about it."

He grinned, but only added that Tom had been nagged into most of his wildness.

"I'm not excusing him," he went on, apparently afraid that he should seem to be condoning iniquity; "but there's a good deal to be said for him. Aunt Naomi says he ought to be driven out of decent society, but Tom Webbe never did a mean thing in his life."

I was rather surprised to hear this defense from Deacon Richards, but I certainly agreed with him. Tom's sin makes me cringe; but I realize that I'm not capable of judging him, and he certainly has a good deal of excuse for whatever evil he has fallen into.

June 2. One thing more which Deacon Richards said has made me think a good deal. He asked me what Tom had meant to do about the child if its mother lived. I told him Julia had been willing for me to have baby in any case. He thought in silence a moment.

"I don't believe," he said, "Tom ever meant to live with that woman. He must have married her to clear his conscience."

"He married her so the child should not be disgraced," I answered.

Deacon Daniel looked at me with those great keen eyes glowing beneath his shaggy white brows.

"Then he went pretty far toward clearing his record," was his comment. "There are not many men would have tied themselves to such a wife for the sake of a child."

This was not very orthodox, perhaps, but a good heart will get the better of orthodoxy now and then. It has set me to thinking about Tom and his wife in a way which had not occurred to me. I wonder if it is true that he did not mean to live with her. I remember now that he said he would never see Julia again, but at the time this meant nothing to me. If he had thought of making a home, he would naturally expect to have his child, but after all I doubt if at that time he considered anything except the good of baby. He did not love her; he had not even looked at her; but he tried to do her right as far as he could. He could give her an honest name in the eyes of the world, but he must have known that he could not make a home with Julia where the surroundings would be good for a child. This must have been what he considered for the moment. Yet Tom is one who thinks out things, and he may have thought out the future of the mother too.

When I look back I wonder how it was I consented so quickly to take Tomine. I wanted to help Tom, and I wanted him to be able to decide without being forced by any consideration of baby. I do not know whether he ought to have married Julia for her own sake. If she had lived, I am afraid I should have been tempted to think he had better not have bound himself to her; and yet I realize that I should have been disappointed in him if he had decided not to do it. I doubt if I could have got rid entirely of the feeling that somehow he would have been cowardly. I wonder if he had any notion of my feeling? He came out of the trial nobly, at least, and I honor him with all my heart for that.

June 5. Aunt Naomi has now a theme exactly to her taste in the growing extravagance of George's wife. Mrs. Weston has certainly elaborated her style of dress a good deal, a thing which is the more noticeable from the fact that in Tuskamuck we are on the whole so little given to gorgeous raiment. I remember that when I called I thought her rather overdressed. To-day Aunt Naomi talked for half an hour with the greatest apparent enjoyment about the fine gowns and expensive jewelry with which the bride is astonishing the town. I am afraid it does not take much to set us talking. I tried half a dozen times to-day to change the subject, but my efforts were wasted. Aunt Naomi was not to be diverted from a theme so congenial. I reminded her that any bride was expected to display her finery--this is part of the established formality with which marriage is attended.

"That's all very well," she retorted with a sniff; "folks want to see the wedding outfit. This is finery George Weston has had to pay for himself."

"I don't see how anybody can know that," I told her; and I added that it did not seem to me to be the town's business if it were true.

"She tells everybody he gave her the jewelry," Aunt Naomi responded; "and the dresses she's had made since she was married. She hadn't anything herself. The Watsons say she was real poor."

"The marriage was so sudden," I said, "that very likely she hadn't time to get her wedding outfit. At any rate, Aunt Naomi, I don't see what you and I have to do with her clothes."

The dear old gossip went on wagging her foot and smiling with evident delight.

"It's the business of the neighbors that she's sure to ruin her husband if she keeps on with her extravagance, isn't it? Besides, she wears her clothes to have them talked about. She talks about them herself."

"A few dresses won't ruin her husband," I protested.

"She has one hired girl now, and she's talking of a second," Aunt Naomi went on, unshaken. "Did you ever hear of such foolishness?"

I reminded her that I had two maids myself.

"Oh, you," she returned; "that's different. I hope you don't put her on a level with real folks, do you?"

I tried to treat the whole matter as if it were of no consequence, and I did stop the talk here; but secretly I am troubled. George has very little aside from what he earns in his profession, and he might easily run behind if his wife is really extravagant. He needs a woman to help him save.

June 6. Tomine delighted the family to-day by her wonderful precocity in following with her eyes the flight of a blue-bottle fly that buzzed about the nursery. Such intelligence in one so young is held by us women to betoken the most extraordinary promise. I communicated the important event to Mr. Saychase, who came to call, and he could neither take it gravely nor laugh at the absurdity of our noticing so slight a thing. He seemed to be trying to find out how I wished him to look at it; and as I was divided between laughter and secret pride in baby he could not get a sure clue. How dull the man is; but no doubt he is good. When piety and stupidity are united, it is unfortunate that they should be made prominent by being set high in spiritual places.

June 9. I have a good deal of sympathy with Cain's question when he asked the Lord if he were his brother's keeper. Of course his crime turned the question in his case into a mere pitiful excuse, but Cain was at least clever enough to take advantage of a principle which must appeal to everybody. We cannot be responsible for others when we have neither authority nor control over them. It is one of the hardest forms of duty, it seems to me, when we feel that we ought to do our best, yet are practically sure that in the end we can effect little or nothing. What can I do to influence George's wife? Somehow we seem to have no common ground to meet on. Father used to say that people who do not speak the same ethical language cannot communicate moral ideas to each other. This is rather a high-sounding way of saying that Mrs. Weston and I cannot understand each other when anything of real importance comes up. It is of course as much my fault as hers, but I really do not know how to help or change it. I suppose there is a certain arrogance and self-righteousness in my feeling that I could direct her, but I am certainly older and I believe I am wiser. Yet I am not her keeper, and if to feel that I am not involves me in the cowardice of Cain, I cannot help it. I am ready to do anything I can do, but what is there?

June 11. Still it is George's wife. I dare say a good deal of talk has been circulating, and I have not heard it. I have been so occupied with graver matters ever since George was married that I have seen few people, and have paid little heed to the village talk. To-day old lady Andrews said her say. She began by reminding me of the conversation we had had in regard to calling on the bride.

"I am glad we did it, Ruth," she went on. "It puts us in the right whatever happens; but she will not do. I shall never ask her to my house."

I could say nothing. I knew she was right, but I was so sorry for George.

"She is vulgar, Ruth," the sweet old voice went on. "She called a second time on me yesterday, and I've been only once to see her. She said a good deal about it's being the duty of us--she said 'us,' my dear,--to wake up this sleepy old place. I told her that, personally, since she was good enough to include me with herself, I preferred the town as it had been."

I fairly laughed out at the idea of old lady Andrews' delivering this with well-bred sweetness, and I wondered how far Mrs. Weston perceived the sarcasm.

"Did she understand?" I asked.

"About half, I think, my dear. She saw she had made a mistake, but I doubt if she quite knew what it was. She was uneasy, and said she thought those who had a chance ought to make things more lively."

I asked if Mrs. Weston gave any definite idea how this liveliness was to be secured.

"Not very clearly," was the answer. "She said something about hoping soon to have a larger house so she could entertain properly. Her dress was dreadfully showy, according to my old-fashioned notions. I am afraid we are too slow for her, my dear. She will have to make a more modern society for herself."

And so the social doom of George's wife is written, as far as I can see. I can if I choose ask people to meet her, but that will do her little good when they have looked her over and given her up. They will come to my house to meet anybody I select, but they will not invite her in their turn. It is a pity social distinctions should count for so much; but in Tuskamuck they certainly do.

June 12. Mr. Saychase called again this afternoon. He is so thin and so pale that it is always my inclination to have Hannah bring him something to eat at once. To-day he had an especially nervous air, and I tried in vain to set him at his ease. I fear he may have taken it into his head to try to bring me into the church. He did not, it is true, say anything directly about religion, but he had an air of having something very important in reserve which he was not yet ready to speak of. He talked about the church work as if he expected me to be interested. He would not have come so soon again if he did not have some particular object.

It is a pity anything so noble as religion should so often have weak men to represent it. What is good in religion they do not fairly stand for, and what is undesirable they somehow make more evident. If superstition is to be a help, it must appeal to the best feelings, and a weak priest touches only the weaker side of character. One is not able to receive him on his merits as a man, but has to excuse him in the name of his devotion to religion.

Still, Mr. Saychase is a good man, and he means well with whatever strength of mind nature endowed him.

June 13. Tom came to-day to see baby,--not that he paid much attention to her when he saw her. It amuses me to find how jealous I am getting for Tomine, and anxious she shall be treated with deference. I see myself rapidly growing into a hen-with-one-chicken attitude of mind, but I do not know how it is to be helped. I exhibited baby this afternoon with as much pride and as much desire that she should be admired as if she had been my veriest own, so it was no wonder that Tom laughed at me.

He was very grave when he came, but little by little the fun-loving sparkle came into his eyes and a smile grew on his face.

"You'd make a first rate saleswoman, Ruth," he said, "if you could show off goods as well as you do babies."

I suppose I can never meet Tom again with the easy freedom we used to feel, especially with baby to remind us; but we have been good friends so long that it is a great comfort to feel something of the old comradeship to be still possible.

Tom was so awkward about baby, so unwilling to touch her, that I offered to put her into his arms. Then he suddenly grew brave.

"Don't, Ruth," he said. "It hurts you that I can't care for the baby, but I can't. Perhaps I shall sometime."

I took Thomasine away without a word, and gave her to Rosa in the nursery. When I came back to the parlor Tom was in his favorite position before the window. He wheeled round suddenly when he heard me.

"You are not angry, Ruth?" he asked.

"No, Tom," I answered; "only sorry."

I sat down and took up my sewing, while he walked about the room. He stopped in front of me after a moment.

"I wanted to tell you, Ruth," he said, "that I am not going back to New York."

I looked at him questioningly, and waited.

"I had really a good opening there," he went on; "but I thought I ought not to take it."

I asked him why.

"I'll be hanged if I quite know," he responded explosively. "I suppose it's part obstinacy that makes me too stubborn to run away from disgrace, and partly it's father. This thing has broken him terribly. I'm going to stay and help him out."

I know how Tom hates farming, and I held out my hand to him and said so.

"I hate everything," he returned desperately; "but it wouldn't be square to leave him now when he's so cut up on my account."

We were both of us, I am sure, too moved to have much talk, and Tom did not stay long. He went off rather abruptly, with hardly a good-by; but I think I understood. I am glad he has the pluck to stand by poor old Deacon Daniel; but he must learn to be fond of baby. That will be a comfort to him.

June 15. George seems to me to be almost beside himself. I cannot comprehend what his wife is doing to him. She has apparently already come to realize that she is not succeeding in Tuskamuck, and is determined to conquer by display and showy ways of living. She cannot know us very well if she supposes that such means will do here.

Her latest move I find it hard to forgive her. I do not understand how George can have done it, no matter how much she urged him; but I am of course profoundly ignorant how such a woman controls a man. I am afraid one thing which made him attractive to me was that he was so willing to be influenced, but we see a man in a light entirely different when it is another woman who shapes his life. What once seemed a fine compliance takes on a strange appearance of weakness when we are no longer the moving force; but I think I do myself no more than justice when I feel that at least I tried always to influence George for his own good.

Poor Miss Charlotte came over directly after breakfast this morning to tell me. She had been brooding over it half the night, poor soul, and her eyes looked actually withered with crying and lack of sleep.

"I know I exaggerate it," she kept saying, "and of course he didn't mean to insult me; but to think anybody dared to ask me to sell the house, the Kendall house that our family has lived in for four generations! It would have killed my father if he had known I should live to come to this!"

I tried to soothe her, and to make her believe that in offering to buy her house George had thought only of how much he admired it, and not at all of her feelings, which he could not understand.

"Of course he could not understand my feelings," Miss Charlotte said, with a bitterness which I am sure was unconscious. "He never had a family, and I ought to remember that."

She grew somewhat more calm as she unburdened her heart. She told me George had praised the place, and said how much he had always liked it. He confessed that it was his wife who first suggested the purchase: she wanted a house where she could entertain and which would be of more importance than the one in which she lived.

"He said," Miss Charlotte went on with a strange mingling of pride and sorrow, "his wife felt that the house in itself would give any family social standing. I don't know how pleased his wife would be if she knew he told me, but he said it. He told me she meant to have repairs and improvements. She must feel as if she owned it already. He said she had an iron dog stored somewhere that she meant to put on the lawn. Think of it, Ruth, an iron dog on our old lawn!"

Then suddenly all the sorrow of her lot seemed to overwhelm her at once, and she broke down completely. She sobbed so unrestrainedly and with so complete an abandonment of herself to her grief that I cried with her, even while I was trying to stop her tears.

"It isn't just George Weston's coming to ask me to sell the place," she said; "it is all of it: it's my being so poor I can't keep up the name, and the family's ending with me, and none of my kin even to bury me. It's all of the hurts I've got from life, Ruth; and it's growing so old I've no strength any longer to bear them. Oh, it's having to keep on living when I want to be dead!"

I threw my arms about her, and kissed the tears from her wrinkled cheeks, though there were about as many on my own.

"Don't," I begged her, "don't, dear Miss Charlotte. You break my heart! We are all of us your kin, and you know we love you dearly."

She returned my embrace convulsively, and tried to check her sobbing.

"I know it's cowardly," she got out brokenly. "It's cowardly and wicked. I never broke down so before. I won't, Ruth dear. Just give me a little time."

Dear Miss Charlotte! I made her stay with me all day; and indeed she was in no condition to do anything else. I got her to take a nap in the afternoon, and when she went home she was once more her own brave self. She said good-night with one of her clumsy joking speeches.

"Good-by, my dear," she said; "the next time I come I'll try not to be so much like the waterworks girl that had a creek in her back and a cataract in each eye."

She is always facetious when she does not quite trust herself to be serious. And I, who do not dare to trust myself to think about George and his wife, had better stop writing.

June 17. Deacon Richards presented himself at twilight, and found me sitting alone out on the doorsteps. I watched his tall figure coming up the driveway, bent with age a little, but still massive and vigorous; and somehow by the time he was near enough to speak, I felt that I had caught his mood. He smiled broadly as he greeted me.

"Where's the baby?" he demanded. "I supposed I should find you giving it its supper."

"There isn't any 'it' in this house," was my retort; "and as for baby's supper, you are just as ignorant as a man always is. Any woman would know that babies are put to bed long before this."

He grinned down upon me from his height.

"How should I know what time it went to bed?" he asked, with a laugh in his voice. "I never raised a baby. I've come to talk about it, though."

"Look here, Deacon Daniel," I cried out, with affected indignation, "I will not have my baby called 'it,' as if she were a stick or a stock!"

He laughed outright at this; then at my invitation sat down beside me. We were silent for a time, looking at the color fading in the west, and the single star swimming out of the purple as the sky changed into gray. The frogs were working at their music with all the persistence of a child strumming five-finger exercises, but their noise only made the evening more peaceful.

"How restful it is," I said to him at last; "it almost makes one feel there can never be any fretting again about anything."

Deacon Daniel did not answer for a moment, then he said with the solemnity of one who seldom puts sentiment into words,--

"It is like the Twenty-third Psalm."

I simply assented, and then we were silent again, until at last he moved as if he were waking himself, and sighed. I always wonder whether somewhere in the past Deacon Richards has had his romance, and if so what it may have been. If he has, a night like this might well bring it up to his memory. I am glad if it comes to him with the peace of a psalm.

"Have you thought, Miss Ruth," the Deacon asked at length in the growing dark, "what a responsibility you are taking upon yourself in having that baby?"

It was like the dear old man to have considered me and to look at the moral side of the question. He wanted to help me, I could see; and of course he cannot understand how entirely religious one may be without theology. I told him I had thought of it very seriously; and it seemed to me sometimes that it was more than I was equal to. But I added that I could not help thinking I could do better by baby than Mrs. Webbe.

"Mrs. Webbe is no sort of a woman to bring up a child," he agreed. Then he added, with a shrewdness that surprised me a little: "Babies have got to be given baby-treatment as well as baby-food."

"Of course they have," was my reply. "Babies have a right to love as well as to milk, and poor little Thomasine would get very little from her grandmother."

Deacon Daniel gave a contemptuous snort.

"That woman couldn't really love anything," he declared; "or if she did she'd show it by being hateful."

I said she certainly loved Tom.

"Yes," he retorted; "and she's nagged him to death. For my part I can't more than half blame Tom Webbe as I ought to, when I think of his having had his mother to thorn him everlastingly."

"Then you do think it's better for baby to be with me than with her grandmother?" I asked him.

"It's a hundred times better, of course; but I wondered if you'd thought of the responsibility of its--of her religious instruction."

We had come to the true kernel of the Deacon's errand. I really believe that in his mind was more concern for me than for baby. He is always unhappy that I am not in the fold of the church; and I fancy that more or less consciously he was making of Thomasine an excuse for an attempt to reach me. It is not difficult to understand his feeling. Mother used to affirm that believers are anxious to proselyte because they cannot bear to have anybody refuse to acknowledge that they are right. This is not, I am sure, the whole of it. Of course no human being likes to be thought wrong, especially on a thing which, like religion, cannot be proved; but there is a good deal of genuine love in the attempt of a man like Deacon Daniel to convert an unbeliever. He is really grieved for me, and I would do anything short of actual dishonesty to make him suppose that I believed as he would have me. I should so like him to be happy about my eternal welfare. When the future does not in the least trouble me, it seems such a pity that he should be disturbed.

I told him to-night I should not give baby what he would call religious instruction, but I should never interfere if others should teach her, if they made what is good attractive.

"But you would tell her that religion isn't true," he objected.

"Oh, no;" I answered. "I should have to be honest, and tell her if she asked that I don't believe we know anything about another life; but of course as far as living in this one goes I shouldn't disagree with religion."

He tried to argue with me, but I entirely refused to be led on.

"Deacon Daniel," I told him, "I know it is all in your kindness for me that you would talk, but I refuse to have this beautiful summer evening wasted on theology. You couldn't convince me, and I don't in the least care about convincing you. I am entirely content that you should believe your way, and I am entirely satisfied with mine. Now I want to talk with you about our having a reading-room next winter."

So I got him to another subject, and what is better I think I really interested him in my scheme of opening a free library. If we can once get that to working it will be a great help to the young men and boys. "The time seems to have come in human development," I remember Father's saying not long before he died, "when men must be controlled by the broadening instead of by the narrowing of their minds."

June 18. I have been considering why it is that I have had so much said to me this spring about religion. People have not been in the habit of talking to me about it much. They have come to let me go my own way. I suppose the fact of Mother's death has brought home to them that I do not think in their way. How a consistent and narrow man can look at the situation I have had a painful illustration in Mr. Thurston. If Kathie had not pushed him into a corner by asking him about Mother, I doubt if he could have gone to the length he did; but after all any really consistent believer must take the view that I am doomed to eternal perdition. I am convinced that few really do believe anything of the sort, but they think that they do, and so baby and I have been a centre of religious interest.

Another phase of this interest has shown itself in Mr. Saychase's desire to baptize Thomasine. I wonder if I had better put my preferences in my pocket, and let the thing be done. It offends my sense of right that a human being should have solemn vows made for her before she can have any notions of what all this means; but if one looks at the whole as simply promises on the part of adults that they will try to have the child believe certain things and follow certain good ways of living, there is no great harm in it. I suppose Deacon Webbe and his wife would be pleased. I will let Tom decide the matter.

June 21. I met Tom in the street to-day, and he absolutely refuses to have baby christened.

"I'll have no mummeries over any child of mine," he declared. "I've had enough of that humbug to last me a lifetime."

I could not help saying I wished he were not so bitter.

"I can't help it, Ruth," was his retort. "I am bitter. I've been banged over the head with religion ever since I was born, and told that I was 'a child of the covenant' till I hate the very thought of the whole business. Whatever you do, don't give anybody the right to twit Thomasine with being 'a child of the covenant.' She has enough to bear in being the child of her parents."

"Don't, Tom," I begged him. "You hurt me."

Without thinking what I did I put my hand on his arm. He brushed it lightly with his fingers, looking at it in a way that almost brought tears to my eyes. I took it off quickly, but I could not face him, and I got away at once. Poor Tom! He is so lonely and so faithful. I am so sorry that he will keep on caring for me like that. No woman is really good enough not to tremble at the thought of absorbing the devotion of a strong man; and it seems wicked that I should not love Tom.

June 25. The rose I transplanted to Mother's grave is really, I believe, going to bloom this very summer. I am glad the blossoms on Father's should have an echo on hers.

June 29. Babies and diaries do not seem to go very well together. There is no tangible reason why I should not write after the small person is asleep, for that is the time I have generally taken; but the fact is I sit working upon some of Tomine's tiny belongings, or now and then sit in the dark and think about her. My journal has been a good friend, but I am afraid its nose is out of joint. Baby has taken its place. I begin to see I made this book a sort of safety-valve for poor spirits and general restlessness. Now I have this sweet human interest in my life I do not need to resort to pen and ink for companionship. The dear little rosy image of Thomasine is with me all the time I seem to be sitting alone.

June 30. Last night I felt as if I was done with relieving my mind by writing in an unresponsive journal; to-night I feel as if I must have just this outlet to my feelings. Last night I thought of baby; to-night I am troubled about her father.

I saw Tom this afternoon at work in the hayfield, looking so brown and so handsome that it was a pleasure to see him. He had the look of a man who finds work just the remedy for heart-soreness, and I was happy in thinking he was getting into tune with wholesome life. I was so pleased that I took the footpath across the field as a mere excuse to speak to him, and I thought he would have been glad to see me. I came almost up to him before he would notice me, although I think he must have seen me long before. He took off his hat as I came close to him, and wiped his forehead.

"Tom," I said at once, "I came this way just to say how glad I am to see you look as if you were getting contented with your work. You were working with such a will."

I do not know that it was a tactful speech, but I was entirely unprepared for the shadow which came over his face.

"I was trying to get so completely tired out that I should sleep like a log to-night," he answered.

Before anything else could be said Deacon Daniel came up, and the talk for the rest was of the weather, and the hay, and nothings. I came away as sad as I had before been pleased. I can understand that Tom is sore in his heart. He is dominant, and his life is made up of things which he hates; he is ambitious, and he is fond of pleasure. He has no pleasure, and he can see nothing before him but staying on with his father. It is true enough that it is his own fault. He has never been willing to stick to work, and the keenest of his regrets must be about his own ill-doing. He is so generous, however, and so manly and kind that I cannot bear to see him grow hard and sad and bitter. Yet what can I do to help it? Certainly this is another case for asking if I am my brother's keeper. I am afraid that I was resigned not to be the keeper of Mrs. Weston, but with Tom it is different. Poor Tom!

VII

JULY

July 2. Thomasine is legally my daughter. It gives me an odd feeling to find myself really a parent. George and Tom met here this forenoon with the papers, and all necessary formalities were gone through with. It was not a comfortable time for any of us, I fancy; and I must own that George acted strangely. He was out of spirits, and was but barely civil to Tom. He has never liked the idea of my having Thomasine, and has tried two or three times to persuade me to give her up. I have refused to discuss the question with him, because it was really settled already. To-day he came before Tom, and made one more protest.

"You can keep the child if you are so determined," he said, "though why you should want to I can't conceive; but why need you adopt it? It hasn't any claim on you."

I told him that she had the claim that I loved her dearly. He looked at me with an expression more unkind than I had ever seen in his face.

"How much is it for her father's sake?" he burst out.

The words, offensive as they were, were less so than the manner.

"A good deal," I answered him soberly. "I have been his friend from the time we were both children."

He moved in his chair uneasily.

"Look here, Ruth," he said; "you've no occasion to be offended because I hint at what everybody else will say."

I asked what that was.

"You are angry," was his response. "When you put on your grand air it is no use to argue with you; but I've made up my mind to be plain. Everybody says you took the baby because you are fond of him."

I could feel myself stiffening in manner with every word, but I could not help it. I had certainly a right to be offended; but I tried to speak as naturally as I could.

"I don't know, George," was my reply, "what business it is of everybody's; and if it were, why should I not be fond of Tom?"

He flushed and scowled, and got up from his seat.

"Oh, if you take it that way," he answered, "of course there's nothing more for me to say."

I was hurt and angry, but before anything more could be said Rosa showed Tom in. He said good-morning to George stiffly, but Tom is always instinctively polite, I think. George had toward him an air plainly unfriendly. I do not understand why George should feel as he does about my adopting Thomasine, but in any case he has no right to behave as he