“Don’t she look dreadful!” said the good lady, as Elizabeth went from the house.  “Oh, I never have seen anybody so changed!”

“She’s pulled down a bit since she come,” said Karen, who gave Elizabeth but a moderate share of her good will at any time.  “She’s got her mind up high enough, anyway, for all she’s gone through.”

“Who hain’t?” said Clam.  “Hain’t the Governor his mind up high enough?  And you can’t pull him down, but you can her.”

“His don’t never need,” said Karen.

“Well —­ I don’ know, —­” said Clam, picking up several things about the floor —­ “but them high minds is a trial.”

“Hain’t you got one yourself, girl?” said old Karen.

“Hope so, ma’am.  I take after my admirers.  That’s all the way I live, —­ keeping my head up —­ always did.”

Karen deigned no reply, but went off.

“Mis’ Nettles,” said Clam, “do you think Miss Haye ’ll ever stand it up here all alone in this here place?”

“Why not?” said Mrs. Nettley innocently.

“I guess your head ain’t high enough up for to see her’n,” said Clam, in scornful impatience.  And she too quitted the conversation in disgust.

CHAPTER XII.

‘Resolve,’ the haughty moralist would say,
‘The single act is all that we demand.’ 
Alas! such wisdom bids a creature fly
Whose very sorrow is, that time hath shorn
His natural wings. 
WORDSWORTH.

The book in Elizabeth’s hand was her bible.  It was the next thing, and the only thing to be done after Winthrop’s going away, that she could think of, to begin upon the first chapter of Matthew.  It was action, and she craved action.  It was an undertaking; for her mind remembered and laid hold of Winthrop’s words —­ “Ask honestly, of your own conscience and of God, at each step, what obligation upon you grows out of what you read.”  And it was an undertaking that Winthrop had set her upon.  So she sought out her yesterday’s couch of moss with its cedar canopy, and sat down in very different mood from yesterday’s mood, and put her bible on her lap.  It was a feeling of dull passive pain now; a mood that did not want to sleep.

The day itself was very like yesterday.  Elizabeth listened a minute to the sparrow and the locust and the summer wind, but presently she felt that they were overcoming her; and she opened her book to the first chapter of Matthew.  She was very curious to find her first obligation.  Not that she was unconscious of many resting upon her already; but those were vague, old, dimly recognized obligations; she meant to take them up now definitely, in the order in which they might come.

She half paused at the name in the first verse, —­ was there not a shadow of obligation hanging around that?  But if there were, she would find it more clearly set forth and in detail as she went on.  She passed it for the present.