“Oh, don’t ask me, Harriet!  Inquire of their Creator; or try the market-house.”

It was at the end of this visit that Harriet as usual imparted to Miss Anna the freshest information regarding affairs at home:  that Isabel had gone to spend the summer with friends at the seashore, and was to linger with other friends in the mountains during autumn; that her mother had changed her own plans, and was to keep the house open, and had written for the Fieldings—­Victor’s mother and brothers and sisters—­to come and help fill the house; that everything was to be very gay.

“I cannot fathom what is under it all,” said Harriet, with her hand on the side gate at leaving.  “But I know that mother and Isabel have quarrelled.  I believe mother has transferred her affections—­and perhaps her property.  She has rewritten her will since Isabel went away.  What have I to do, Anna, but interest myself in other people’s affairs?  I have none of my own.  And she never calls Isabel’s name, but pets Victor from morning till night.  And her expression sometimes!  I tell you, Anna, that when I see it, if I were a bird and could fly, gunshot could not catch me.  I see a summer before me!  If there is ever a chance of my doing anything, don’t be shocked if I do it;” and in Harriet’s eyes there were two mysterious sparks of hope—­two little rising suns.

“What did she mean?” pondered Miss Anna.

IV

“Barbee,” said Judge Morris one morning a fortnight later, “what has become of Marguerite?  One night not long ago you complained of her as an obstacle in the path of your career:  does she still annoy you with her attentions?  You could sue out a writ of habeas corpus in your own behalf if she persists.  I’d take the case.  I believe you asked me to mark your demeanor on the evening of that party.  I tried to mark it; but I did not discover a great deal of demeanor to mark.”

The two were sitting in the front office.  The Judge, with nothing to do, was facing the street, his snow-white cambric handkerchief thrown across one knee, his hands grasping the arms of his chair, the newspaper behind his heels, his straw hat and cane on the floor at his side, and beside them the bulldog—­his nose thrust against the hat.

Barbee was leaning over his desk with his fingers plunged in his hair and his eyes fixed on the law book before him—­unopened.  He turned and remarked with dry candor: 

“Marguerite has dropped me.”

“If she has, it’s a blessed thing.”

“There was more depth to her than I thought.”

“There always is.  Wait until you get older.”

“I shall have to work and climb to win her.”

“You might look up meantime the twentieth verse of the twenty-ninth chapter of Genesis.”

Barbee rose and took down a Bible from among the law books:  it had been one of the Judge’s authorities, a great stand-by for reference and eloquence in his old days of pleading.  He sat down and read the verse and laid the volume aside with the mere comment:  “All this time I have been thinking her too much of a child; I find that she has been thinking the same of me.”