Watching her from under the covers, the captain saw that she had left off the black snood and tied her hair with a band of rose-colored ribbon.  Her lips were ruddy and her eyes alight:  once or twice she laughed to herself.

“What high day or holiday is it, Jane?”

“Oh, every day is a high day now!” running to kiss him.  “I was just thinking how comfortable money is, and how glad I am that we have it,” glancing about delighted at his luxurious toilet appointments before the low wood-fire.  Then she spread out his dressing-gown and velvet smoking-cap, and eyed with her head on one side the fine shirt and its costly studs.

“Do you remember the rag-carpet in your room which we thought such a triumph? and the old tin shaving-cup?  Now, my lord, look out upon your estate!” opening the window.  “Your musicians have come to waken you, and your servitors stand without,” as Buff tapped at the door with hot water.

“He is as comfortable as a baby wrapped in lamb’s wool,” she thought as she ran down the stairs.  “And this air is so pure and the sun so bright!  Oh, he must grow strong here!  Anybody would be cured here—­anybody!”

The captain followed her to the barnyard.  It was one of her inexorable prescriptions for him that he should drink a glass of warm milk-punch before breakfast, and smell the cow’s breath during the operation.  She was milking the white cow herself, while the pseudo sempstress, Nichols, waited with the goblet, and the bandy-legged shoemaker, Twiss, stood on guard, eyeing Brindle’s horns suspiciously.

“Now the glass!  These are the strippings.  Oh you’ll soon learn, Betty!  You’ll make butter as well as you used to make dresses badly.”

The little widow and Twiss laughed, as they always did at Jane’s weak jokes, and took the punch to the captain.  She was the finest wit of her day in their eyes.  The hostler’s boy ran down from the stable to speak to her.  She thought he had as innocent a face as she had ever seen.  No doubt he would have gone to perdition if Neckart had not rescued him.  She stopped to talk to him with beaming eyes, and meeting Betty’s toddling baby took it up and tossed it in the air, and then walked on, carrying the soft little thing in her arms.  The farm was like the Happy Valley this morning!  God was so good to her!  She could warm and comfort all these people.  Then she turned into the woods and sat down on a fallen log.  It was the place where they had stopped to rest yesterday, Neckart lying at her feet.  There was the imprint still in the dead moss where his arm had lain.  She looked guiltily about, and then laid her hand in the broken moss with a quick passionate touch.  The baby caught her chin in its fingers.  She hugged it to her breast, and kissed it again and again.  From the hemlock overhead a tanager suddenly flashed up into the air with a shrill peal of song.  Jane looked up, her face and throat dyed crimson.  Did he know?  She glanced down at the grass, at the friendly trees all alive with rustling and chirping.  The sky overhead was so deep and warm a blue to-day.  It seemed as if they all knew that he loved her.