and Ethelyn felt a pang of something like envy as she thought how differently Melinda’s winter would pass from her own, while James trembled for the effect Washington might have upon the girl who walked so slowly with him along the beaten path between his house and her father’s, and whose eyes, as she bade him good-night, were little less bright than the stars shining down upon her.  Would she come back like Ethelyn?  He hoped not, for there would then be an end to all fond dreams he had been dreaming.  She would despise his homely ways and look for somebody higher than plain Jim Markham in his cowhide boots.  James was sorry to have Melinda go, and Ethelyn was sorry, too.  It seemed as if she was to be left alone, for two days after Melinda’s return, Marcia Fenton and Ella Backus came out from Camden to call, and communicated the news that they, too, were going on to Washington, together with Mrs. Judge Miller, whose father was a United States Senator.  It was terrible to be thus left behind, and Ethelyn’s heart grew harder against her husband for dooming her to such a fate.  Every week James, or John, or Andy brought from the post a letter in Richard’s handwriting, directed to Mrs. Richard Markham, and once in two weeks Andy carried a letter to the post directed in Ethelyn’s handwriting to “Richard Markham, M.C.,” but Andy never suspected that the dainty little envelope, with a Boston mark upon it, inclosed only a blank sheet of paper!  Ethelyn had affirmed so solemnly that she would not write to her husband that she half feared to break her vow; and, besides that, she could not forgive him for having left her behind, while Marcia, Ella, and Melinda were enjoying themselves so much.  She knew she was doing wrong, and not a night of her life did she go to her lonely bed that there did not creep over her a sensation of fear as she thought, “What if I should die while I am so bad?”

At home, in Chicopee, she used always to go through with a form of prayer, but she could not do that now for the something which rose up between her and Heaven, smothering the words upon her lips, and so in this dreadful condition she lived on day after day, growing more, and more desolately and lonely, and wondering sadly if life would always be as dreary and aimless as it was now.  And while she pondered thus, Andy prayed on and practiced his lessons in good manners, provoking the mirth of the whole family by his ludicrous attempts to be polite, and feeling sometimes tempted to give the matter up.  Andy was everything to Ethelyn, and once when her conscience was smiting her more than usual with regard to the blanks, she said to him abruptly:  “if you had made a wicked vow, which would you do—­keep it or break it, and so tell a falsehood?”

Andy was not much of a lawyer, he said, but “he thought he knew some scripter right to the pint,” and taking his well-worn Bible he found and read the parable of the two sons commanded to work in their father’s vineyard.