love her, since I would have stood wide away and aside for the sake of seeing him happy.  But Faith was one of those that, if they can’t get what they want, haven’t any idea of putting up with what they have,—­God forgive me, if I’m hard on the child!  And she couldn’t give Dan an answer right off, but was loath to think of it, and went flirting about among the other boys; and Dan, when he saw she wasn’t so easily gotten, perhaps set more value on her.  For Faith, she grew prettier every day; her great brown eyes were so soft and clear, and had a wide, sorrowful way of looking at you; and her cheeks, that were usually pale, blossomed to roses when you spoke to her, her hair drooping over them dark and silky; and though she was slack and untidy and at loose ends about her dress, she somehow always seemed like a princess in disguise; and when she had on any thing new,—­a sprigged calico, and her little straw bonnet with the pink ribbons, and Mrs. Devereux’s black scarf, for instance,—­you’d have allowed that she might have been daughter to the Queen of Sheba.  I don’t know, but I rather think Dan wouldn’t have said any more to Faith, from various motives, you see, notwithstanding the neighbors were still remonstrating with him, if it hadn’t been that Miss Brown—­she that lived round the corner there; the town’s well quit of her now, poor thing!—­went to saying the same stuff to Faith, and telling her all that other folks said.  And Faith went home in a passion,—­some of your timid kind nothing ever abashes, and nobody gets to the windward of them,—­and, being perfectly furious, fell to accusing Dan of having brought her to this, so that Dan actually believed he had, and was cut to the quick with contrition, and told her that all the reparation he could make he was waiting and wishing to make, and then there came floods of tears.  Some women seem to have set out with the idea that life’s a desert for them to cross, and they’ve laid in a supply of water-bags accordingly,—­but it’s the meanest weapon!  And then again, there’s men that are iron, and not to be bent under calamities, that these tears can twist round your little finger.  Well, I suppose Faith concluded ’twas no use to go hungry because her bread wasn’t buttered on both sides, but she always acted as if she’d condescended ninety degrees in marrying Dan, and Dan always seemed to feel that he’d done her a great injury; and there it was.

I kept in the house for a time; mother was worse.—­and I thought the less Dan saw of me the better; I kind of hoped he’d forget, and find his happiness where it ought to be.  But the first time I saw him, when Faith had been his wife all the spring, there was the look in his eyes that told of the ache in his heart.  Faith wasn’t very happy herself, of course, though she was careless; and she gave him trouble,—­keeping company with the young men just as before; and she got into a way of flying straight to me, if Dan ventured to reprove her ever so lightly; and stormy nights, when he was gone, and in his long trips, she always locked up her doors and came over and got into my bed; and she was one of those that never listened to reason, and it was none so easy for me, you may suppose.