She gave my arm a severe pinch as she passed with the ham, and I thought it best to follow her.  Mother looked at her with a smile, and said:  “Deal gently with Brother Abram, Temperance.”

“Brother be fiddlesticked!” she said tartly.  “Miss Morgeson, do you want some quinces?”

“Certainly.”

“We’ll make hard marmalade this year, then.  You shall have the quinces to-morrow.”  And she retired with a softened face.  I was told that Abram Handy was a widower anxious to take Temperance for a second helpmeet, and that she could not decide whether to accept or refuse him.  She had confessed to mother that she was on the fence, and didn’t know which way to jump.  He was a poor, witless thing, she knew; but he was as good a man as ever breathed, and stood as good a chance of being saved as the wisest church-member that ever lived!  Mother thought her inclined to be mistress of an establishment over which she might have sole control.  Abram owned a house, a garden, and kept pigs, hens, and a cow; these were his themes of conversation.  Mother could not help thinking he was influenced by Temperance’s fortune.  She was worth two thousand dollars, at least.  The care of her wood-lot, the cutting, selling, or burning the wood on it, would be a supreme happiness to Abram, who loved property next to the kingdom of heaven.  The tragedy of the old man’s life was the loss of his only son, who had been killed by a whale a year since.  The Adamant, the ship he sailed in, had not returned, and it was a consoling hope with Abram that his boy’s chist might come back.

“We heard of poor Charming Handy’s death the tenth of September, about three months after Abram began his visits to Temperance,” Veronica said.

“Was his name Charming?” I asked.

“His mother named him,” Abram said, “with a name that she had picked out of Novel’s works, which she was forever and ’tarnally reading.”

“What day of the month is it, Verry?”

“Third of October.”

“What happened a year ago to-day?”

“Arthur fell off the roof of the wood-house.”

“Verry,” he cried, “you needn’t tell my sister of that; now she knows about my scar.  You tell everything; she does not.  You have scars,” he whispered to me; “they look red sometimes.  May I put my finger on your cheek?”

I took his hand, and rubbed his fingers over the cuts; they were not deep, but they would never go away.

“I wish mine were as nice; it is only a little hole under my hair.  Soldiers ought to have long scars, made with great big swords, and I am a soldier, ain’t I, Cassy?”

“Have I heard you sing, Cassy?” asked father.  “Come, let us have some music.”

“‘And the cares which infest the day,’” added Verry.

I had scarcely been in the parlor since my return, though the fact had not been noticed.  Our tacit compact was that we should be ignorant of each other’s movements.  I ran up to my room for some music, and, not having a lamp, stumbled over my shawl and bonnet and various bundles which somebody had deposited on the floor.  I went down by the back way, to the kitchen; Fanny was there alone, standing before the fire, and whistling a sharp air.