of but one passion.  It comes late and lasts long, but never is repeated; the bloom dies out of its resplendence and odor, but no second flowering replaces it.  She was one of these.  But what one man lost in her love, a thousand of her fellow-creatures gained.  ’Tenty was the Deerfield blessing, though she never knew it herself.  All the sick wanted her; all the children pulled at her gown, and smiled at her from their plays; her heart and her hands were so full, no regret found place to nestle there, and silence brooded dove-like over that sorrowful time gone by.

After a while, some ten years after Ned Parker’s death, Miss ’Viny took to her bed again,—­this time never to rise.  Slow consumption had fastened on her, and she knew well what was before her, for so had her mother died; but no saint was ever more patient than she.  ’Tenty was the best of nurses, and had even learned to speak of her aunt’s death without a tremor in her voice, the last triumph of her unselfishness; for Miss ’Viny could bear no agitation, and yet needed to speak of the event she neither dreaded nor desired.

“’Tenty,” said she, one day, “I feel a sight easier to leave you than if you’d married Ned Parker.”

“Why, Aunty?” said Content, a light blush only testifying her surprise at this address.

“Because he was a selfish feller; he always was.  I believe some women are better off to marry, though I can’t say but what I believe a single state is as good; but a woman that gets a real lazy, selfish feller gets pretty near the worst thing there is.  I seemed kind of hard, ’Tenty, them days, but I had feelin’ enough.”

“I don’t doubt but what you had, Aunt ’Viny; only one can’t see far ahead, you know, when it rains.  I’m sure I’ve been as happy as a clam these last six years, and I don’t calculate to resk that by gettin’ married, never.  Besides, I’ve learned what you used to call the grass’s lesson, pretty well.”

Here Parson Goodyear interrupted the conversation, and it never was resumed; for the week after, Miss ’Viny died, and Content was left alone in her little house, “to battle with the world,” as people say.  But no conflict ensued, since it takes two to make a quarrel, and ’Tenty was on good terms with the Deerfield world.  So she lived on, peaceful and peace-making, till forty found her as comely and as happy as ever, a source of perpetual wonder to the neighbors, who said of her, “She has got the dreadfullest faculty of gettin’ along I ever see,” and thereby solved the problem, for all except one, and that other one ’Tenty’s opposite in every trait, Miss Mehitable Hall, Hannah-Ann’s older sister, an old maid of the straitest sect, and one who was nowise sustained under the inflictions of life by the consciousness of enough money to support her, and friends to care for her approaching age.

It was Miss Hitty Hall’s delight to be miserable:  rather an Irish expression, but the only one that suits her case.  One bright October afternoon she came over to see Content, bringing her blue knitting, sure symptom of a visitation.  ’Tenty welcomed her with her usual cordial homeliness, gave her the easiest chair she had, and commenced hospitalities.