“I ain’t so sure about the nonsense,” retorted Sarah, “Abel’s got to be managed like all men folk, an’ he ain’t so different from the rest of ‘em, unless it is that he’s mo’ set.”

She harboured a carefully concealed opinion that Abel was “stooping” to marry Judy, for the Hatches were particularly thriftless and had never succeeded in paying a long standing mortgage.  Besides, they were in the habit of using their parlour commonly on week days, and Mrs. Hatch had once been seen at church in a calico dress—­though, it was true, she had slipped out of the side door before the service was over.  Added to these things, Sarah had observed of late that Judy showed an inclination to shirk her duties, and had a dangerous habit of “mooning” while she was at the wash tub.

“Well, I like a man that’s set, myself,” rejoined Mrs. Hatch, as effusive as ever.  “I used to say thar never was anybody so set as my first husband till I got my second.”

“I ain’t had so wide an experience as you,” replied Sarah, as if she were condescending to an acknowledged lapse in virtue.  “Thar’s a difference between marryin’ for the sake of matrimony, which is right an’ proper accordin’ to Scripture, an’ marryin’ for the sake of a man, which is a sign of weakness in a woman.”

“You ain’t a friend to the feelin’s of natur, ma’am,” remarked old Adam, with respect.

“No, thar never was much natur in me,” responded Sarah, lifting her bombazine skirt with both hands as she stepped over a puddle.  Her floating crape veil, bought ten years after her husband’s death, with the money made from her turkeys, represented the single extravagance as well as the solitary ambition of her life.  Even as a child she had longed ardently to wear crape, and this secret aspiration, which had smouldered in the early poverty-stricken years of her marriage, had burst suddenly into flame when she found herself a widow.  During the burial service over her husband, while she had sat bowed in musty black cotton, which had been loaned her by a neighbour, she had vowed earnestly that she would wear weeds yet for Abner before she died.  Ten years of scraping and saving were devoted to this sacred resolve, and now, twenty years after the death of Abner Revercomb, she was wearing a crape veil for him to his son’s wedding.  As she walked, so strong a smell of camphor floated from her garments, that old Adam sneezed twice, and then muttered hurriedly that “’twas the very season for chills.”  Something of her secret pride in her garb of mourning had entered into him while he limped beside her on his rheumatic old legs.