through dark and bright days, she conveyed that nest of hungry fledglings back and forth over bitter and weary miles, getting their ravenous minds fed at one end of the route, and their ravenous bodies fed at the other.  If the harness broke, Pansy got out with a string.  If the horse dropped a shoe, or dropped himself, Pansy picked up what she could.  In town she drove to the blacksmith shop and to all other shops whither business called her.  Her friends were the blacksmith and the tollgate keeper, her teachers—­all who knew her and they were few:  she had no time for friendships.  At home the only frequent visitor was Ambrose Webb, and Pansy did not care for Ambrose.  The first time she remembered seeing him at dinner, she—­a very little girl—­had watched his throat with gloomy fascination.  Afterward her mother told her he had an Adam’s apple; and Pansy, working obscurely at some problem of theology, had secretly taken down the Bible and read the story of Adam and the fearful fruit.  Ambrose became associated in her mind with the Fall of Man; she disliked the proximity.

No time for friendships.  Besides the labors at school, there was the nightly care of her father on her return, the mending of his clothes; there was the lonely burning of her candle far into the night as she toiled over lessons.  When she had learned all that could be taught her at the school, she left the younger children there and victoriously transferred herself for a finishing course to a seminary of the town, where she was now proceeding to graduate.

This was Pansy, child of plain, poor, farmer folk, immemorially dwelling close to the soil; unlettered, unambitious, long-lived, abounding in children, without physical beauty, but marking the track of their generations by a path lustrous with right-doing.  For more than a hundred years on this spot the land had lessened around them; but the soil had worked upward into their veins, as into the stalks of plants, the trunks of trees; and that clean, thrilling sap of the earth, that vitality of the exhaustless mother which never goes for nothing, had produced one heavenly flower at last—­shooting forth with irrepressible energy a soul unspoiled and morally sublime.  When the top decays, as it always does in the lapse of time, whence shall come regeneration if not from below?  It is the plain people who are the eternal breeding grounds of high destinies.

In the long economy of nature, this, perhaps, was the meaning and the mission of this lofty child who now lay sleepless, shaken to the core with thoughts of the splendid world over into which she was to journey to-morrow.

At ten o’clock next morning she set out.

It had been a question with her whether she should go straight across the fields and climb the fences, or walk around by the turnpike and open the gates.  Her preference was for fields and fences, because that was the short and direct way, and Pansy was used to the short and direct way of getting to the end of her desires.  But, as has been said, she had already fallen into the habit of considering what was due her and becoming to her as a young Mrs. Meredith; and it struck her that this lady would not climb field fences, at least by preference and with facility.  Therefore she chose the highroad, gates, dust, and dignity.