“You’re welcome to him,” said Mr. Barly.

“Ah,” said Mr. Tomkins, “he’s beyond me, Mr. Barly, beyond my means.  I’m not a rich man.  But I have my health.”

“What are riches?” asked Mr. Barly.  “They’re a source of trouble, Mr. Tomkins.  They teach a young girl to waste her time.”

“Well, trouble,” said Mr. Tomkins.

“But what’s trouble?  Between you and me, a bit of trouble is good for us all.  Then we’re liable to know better.”

Mr. Barly shook his head wearily.  “I don’t know,” he said; “folks are queer crotchets.”

“Why, then,” said Mr. Tomkins, “so they are; and so would I be, as crotchety as you like, if I owned anything beyond the | little I have.”

“Small good it would do you,” said Mr. Barly.  “Life is a heavy cross, having or not having, what with other people doing as they please.”  And taking leave of Mr. Tomkins, he went home, thinking that in a world where people robbed their neighbors, it were better not to possess anything.

As he passed the potato patch, he heard Abner singing, without much tune to his voice, a song he had learned in the army.  “Ay,” muttered Mr. Barly, “go on—­sing.  You’ve learned that much, anyway.  I may as well sing, myself, for all the good I’ve ever had attending to my business.  I’ll sing a good one; then I’ll be right along with everybody, and let come what may.”

Anna, too, heard Abner singing, as she knelt in front of the basket where the mother cat lay with her four blind kittens.  “You see, Tabby,” she said, “people still sing.  A lot of them learned to sing in the war, and now they’re home, they may as well sing as cry.  Oh, Tabby, I wanted to sing, too . . . now look at me.

“I went out so grand,” she said.  “I was going to find all sorts of things.  But what did I find?”

At that moment, John Henry entered the barn, smoking his corncob pipe.  When the smell of smoke reached Anna, she grew weak and ill, and stumbling back to the house, went upstairs to rest.  But even to climb the stairs made her catch her breath.  Now, before breakfast of a morning, she was deathly sick; afterwards she was tired, and ready to cry over anything.  Poor Anna; she was dumb with shame.  “I’m worse than Mrs. Wicket,” she said to herself, over and over again.  “I’m worse than Mrs. Wicket.  My life is ruined.  I’d be better dead.”

And what of honest Thomas?  He was pale with fright.  It seemed to him as if the devil had reached up, and caught him by the leg.  He was in for it.  But like a fly in a web, he could not believe that it was not some other fly.  “Oh, God,” he prayed, “look down . . . say something to me.”

When Mr. Jeminy was told that Thomas Frye and Anna Barly were to be married, he exclaimed:  “What a shame.

“Yes,” he continued with energy, “what a shame, Mrs. Grumble.  They did as they were bid.  Now they know that love is a trap to catch the young, and tie them up once and for all, close to the kitchen sink.”