“Don’t go, Judy; you’re in trouble, I see, and so am I,” he said with bitterness.

“Oh, Mr. Revercomb!” she blurted out.  “I didn’t want anybody to catch me in such a pass!”

“I’m not anybody, Judy; I’m a poor devil that was born without sense enough to plough his furrow straight.”

She was a plain woman, but a pretty one would have sent him off in a panic over the meadow.  He had had his lesson from a pretty woman, and the immediate effect of it was to foster the delusion that there was a mysterious affinity between ugliness and virtue.

“Tell me what it is, Judy.  Can I help you?” he said kindly.

“It’s nothin’.  I am always in trouble,” she answered, sobbing outright behind her sunbonnet.  “Between pa and my stepmother, there isn’t a spot on earth I can rest in.”

She looked at him and he knew immediately, from her look, that neither Solomon Hatch nor his second wife was responsible for Judy’s unhappiness.  For a mocking instant it occurred to him that she might have cherished a secret and perfectly hopeless passion for himself.  That she might be cherishing this passion for another, he did not consider at the moment—­though the truth was that her divinity inhabited not a mill, but a church, and was, therefore, she felt, trebly unapproachable.  But her worship was increased by this very hopelessness, this elevation.  It pleased her that the object of her adoration should bend always above her—­that in her dreams he should preach a perpetual sermon and wear an imperishable surplice.

“Well, I’m sorry for you,” said Abel; “I’m sorry for you.”  And indeed he was.  “You’re a good, pious, virtuous girl—­just the sort of a girl a man would want for his wife.”

“I try to be good and I don’t see why I should be so—­so unhappy,” sobbed Judy.  “There ain’t a better hand for raisin’ chickens and flowers and young lambs in the county.”

Again she looked up at him through her tears, and the fool that lies at the bottom of all generous hearts rose instantly to her bait.  As he had once been the sport of his desire, so he was to become now the sport of his pity.

“Any man ought to be proud to have you for his wife, Judy,” he said.

“Ought they, Abel?” she replied passionately, with the vision of the Reverend Orlando rising in serene detachment before her.

For a moment he gazed down at her without speaking.  It was pleasant to feel pity; it was more than pleasant to receive gratitude in return.  On the raw wound in his heart something that was almost like a cooling balm had been poured.

“God knows I’m sorry for you, Judy,” he repeated; “we’re both in the same boat, so I ought to be.  Come to me if I can ever help you, and you’ll find you may count on my word.”

“I—­I’ll remember, Abel,” she answered tearfully, but her thoughts were of a certain pair of purple velvet slippers, begun in rivalry of Blossom’s black ones, which she was embroidering in pansies.