We began reading the book that evening in the candle-light and soon finished it.  I was thrilled by the ideal of human service with which the calling of the lawyer was therein lifted up and illuminated.  After that I had no doubt of my way.

That week a letter came to me from the Senator, announcing the day of Mrs. Wright’s arrival in Canton and asking me to meet and assist her in getting the house to rights.  I did so.  She was a pleasant-faced, amiable woman and a most enterprising house cleaner.  I remember that my first task was mending the wheelbarrow.

“I don’t know what Silas would do if he were to get home and find his wheelbarrow broken,” said she.  “It is almost an inseparable companion of his.”

The schoolmaster and his family were fishing and camping upon the river, and so I lived at the Senator’s house with Mrs. Wright and her mother until he arrived.  What a wonderful house it was, in my view!  I was awed by its size and splendor, its soft carpets and shiny brass and mahogany.  Yet it was very simple.

I hoed the garden and cleaned its paths and mowed the dooryard and did some painting in the house.  I remember that Mrs. Ebenezer Binks—­wife of the deacon and the constable—­came in while I was at the latter task early one morning to see if there were anything she could do.

She immediately sat down and talked constantly until noon of her family and especially of the heartlessness and general misconduct of her son and daughter-in-law because they had refused to let her apply the name of Divine Submission to the baby.  It had been a hard blow to Mrs. Binks, because this was the one and only favor which she had ever asked of them.  She reviewed the history of the Binkses from Ebenezer—­the First—­down to that present day.  There had been three Divine Submissions in the family and they had made the name of Binks known wherever people knew anything.  When Mrs. Wright left the room Mrs. Binks directed her conversation at me, and when Mrs. Wright returned I only got the spray of it.  By dinner time we were drenched in a way of speaking and Mrs. Binks left, assuring us that she would return later and do anything in her power.

“My stars!” Mrs. Wright exclaimed.  “If you see her coming lock the door and go and hide in a closet until she goes away.  Mrs. Binks always brings her ancestors with her and they fill the house so that there’s no room for anybody else.”

When the day’s work was ended Mrs. Wright exclaimed: 

“Thank goodness! the Binkses have not returned.”

We always referred to Mrs. Binks as the Binkses after that.

Mrs. Jenison, a friend of the Wrights, came in that afternoon and told us of the visit of young Latour to Canton and of the great relief of the decent people at his speedy departure.

“I wonder what brought him here,” said Mrs. Wright.

“It seems that he had heard of the beauty of Sally Dunkelberg.  But a bee had stung her nose just before he came and she was a sight to behold.”