“Why, Esther.  She was so set on havin’ a ‘chime,’ as she called it.”

“Well, it was a real good idee!  A real good idee!” and he kept repeating the phrase as though in a perfect ecstasy of appreciation.

When Esther reached home, she and Joe arranged the tables in the side yard, but when the first guest turned in at the gate her mother sent her to the house.  “Now you go into the parlor and rest.  You can just as well sit under that dove as stand under it,” she said.

The girl started listlessly to obey, but the next words revived her like wine: 

“I declare it’s Mis’ Lawrence, and she’s bringing that water-set; she hung on to it till the last minit.”

Esther flew to her chamber and donned her veil, which she had laid aside, then sped down-stairs; but when she passed through the parlor she put her hands over her eyes:  she wanted to look at the water-set first with Joe.  He was no longer helping her mother, and she fluttered about looking for him.  The rooms would soon be crowded, and then there would be no opportunity to examine the wonderful gift.

She darted down a foot-path that crossed the yard diagonally.  It led to a gap in the stone-wall which opened on a lane.  Esther and Joe had been in the habit of walking here of an evening.  It was scarcely more than a grassy way overhung by leaning branches of old fruit trees, but it was a short-cut to the cottage Joe had rented.  Now Esther’s feet, of their own volition, carried her here.  She slid through the opening.  “Joe!” she called, and her voice had the tremulous cadence of a bird summoning its mate; but it died away in a little smothered cry, for not a rod away was Joe, and sitting on a large stone was Sarah Norton.  They had their backs towards her, and were engaged in such an earnest conversation that they did not hear her.  Sarah’s shoulders moved with her quick breathing; she had a hand on Joe’s arm.  Esther stood staring, her thin draperies circling about her, and her childish face pale.  Then she turned, with a swift impulse to escape, but again she paused, her eyes riveted in the opposite direction.  From where she stood the back door of her future home was visible, and two men were carrying out furniture.  Involuntarily she opened her lips to call Joe, but no sound came.  Yes, they had the bureau; they would probably take the spindle-legged stand next.  A strong protective instinct is part of possession, and to Esther that sight was as a magnet to steel.  Down the grassy lane she sped, but so lightly that the couple by the wall were as unobservant of her as they were of the wind stirring the long grass.

Sarah Norton rose.  “I run every step of the way to get here in time.  Please, Joe!” she panted.

He shook his head.  “It’s real kind of you and your mother, Sarah, but I guess I ain’t going to touch any of the money you worked for and earned, and I can’t help but think, when I talk to Lanham—­”