The snow had but one thought for her.  She saw it falling, falling soft and feathery on a baby’s grave in the Episcopal Cemetery at Somerville.  She shivered; it was as if the flakes were falling on her own warm flesh.

If she could but go to that little grave and lie down among the feathery flakes and forget it all, it would be so much easier than this eternal struggle to live.  What had life in store for her?  There was the daily drudgery, years and years of it, and always the crushing knowledge of injustice.

She knew how it would be.  Scandal would track her down—­put a price on her head; these people who had given her a home would hear, and what would all her months of faithful service avail?

“Is this true?” she already heard the Squire say in imagination, and she should have to answer:  “Yes”—­and there would be the open door and the finger pointing to her to go.

She heard the Squire’s familiar step on the stair; unconsciously, she crouched lower; had he come to tell her to go?

But the Squire came in whistling, a picture of homely contentment, hands in pocket, smiling jovially.  She knew there must be no telltale tears on her cheeks, even if her heart was crying out in the cold and snow.  She knew the bitterness of being denied the comfort of tears.  It was but one of the hideous train of horrors that pursued a woman in her position.

She forced them back and met the Squire with a smile that was all the sweeter for the effort.

“Here’s your chair, Squire, all ready waiting for you, and the only thing you want to make you perfectly happy—­is—­guess?” She held out his old corncob pipe, filled to perfection.

“I declare, Anna, you are just spoiling me, and some day you’ll be going off and getting married to some of these young fellows ’round here, and where will I be then?”

“You need have no fears on that score,” she said, struggling to maintain a smile.

“Well, well, that’s what girls always say, but I don’t know what we’ll do without you.  How long have you been with us, now?”

“Let me see,” counting on her fingers:  “just six months.”

“So it is, my dear.  Well, I hope it will be six years before you think of leaving us.  And, Anna, while we are talking, I like to say to you that I have felt pretty mean more than once about the way I treated you that first day you come.”

“Pray, do not mention it, Squire.  Your kindness since has quite made me forget that you hesitated to take an utter stranger into your household.”

“That was it, my dear—­an utter stranger—­and you cannot really blame me; here was Looizy and Kate and I was asked to take into the house with them a young woman whom I had never set eyes on before; it seemed to me a trifle risky, but you’ve proved that I was wrong, my dear, and I’ll admit it.”

The girl dropped the stocking she was mending; her trembling hand refused to support even the pretense of work.  Outside the snow was falling just as it was falling, perhaps, on the little grave where all her youth and hope were buried.