“You’ve brought ’em up well.  That’s a fine son of yours that comes courtin’ my gal, Sarah.  I’ve hoped she’d fancy him for the sake of old times.”

“I never thought of yo’ recollectin’ that feelin’, Reuben.  It makes me feel almost young again, an’ I that old an’ wo’ out.  I’ve had a hard life—­thar’s no disputin’ it, marriage is mostly puttin’ up with things, I reckon, when it ain’t makin’ believe.”

“Thar’s mighty few that gits the one that’s meant for ’em,” said Reuben, “that’s sure enough.  If we did we’d stop movin’ forward, I suppose, an’ begin to balk.  I haven’t much life now, except in Molly, an’ it’s the things that pleases or hurt her that I feel the most.  She’s got a warm heart an’ a hot temper like you used to have, Sarah, an’ the world ain’t easy generally to yo’ sort.”

For a time Sarah was silent, her hands in their black woolen gloves gripping the handle of the basket.

“Well, I must be goin’, Reuben,” she said presently, rising from her chair.  “I’m sorry about yo’ chest, an’ I jest stepped over to bring you this glass of currant jelly I made last summer.  It goes well with meat when yo’ appetite ain’t hearty.”

She held out her hand, shook his with a hurried and awkward movement, and went out of the front door and down the flagged walk as Molly’s steps were heard in the kitchen at the back.

“Sarah Revercomb has been here, honey,” said Reuben.  “She brought me over this glass of currant jelly, and said she was sorry to miss you.”

“Why, what could she have meant?” asked Molly.  “She hates me and she knows I’ve never liked her.”

“Like most folks it ain’t Sarah but the way you take her that matters.  We’ve all got the split somewhar in our shell if you jest know how to find it.  I reckon she’s given in about Abel an’ came over to show it.”

“I’m glad she brought you the jelly, and perhaps she is getting softer with age,” rejoined Molly, still puzzled.

“Don’t worry, honey, she’s a good woman at bottom, but mortal slow of larnin’, and thar’s a lot of Sarah in that boy of hers.”

“I suppose there is, grandfather, for all their fierce quarrelling.  They have the kind of love that will die for you and yet will not so much as suffer you to live.  That’s the way Mrs. Revercomb loves, and it’s the way Abel is loving me now.”

“Let him larn, pretty, let him larn.  He’ll be worth twice as much at fifty as he is to-day, an’ so will you for that matter.  They’re fools that say love is for the young, Molly, don’t you believe ’em.”

Sarah, meanwhile, passed slowly down the flagged walk under the gnarled old apple trees in the orchard.  A few heavy-winged insects, awaking from the frost of the night, droned over the piles of crushed winesaps, and she heard the sound as though it came to her across a distance of forty years.  They were not easy years; she was worn by their hardness, crippled by their poverty, embittered by their sorrows.  “I’ve had a hard life,” she thought.  “I’ve had a hard life, an’ it warn’t fair.”  For the first time it occurred to her that the Providence she had served had not used her honourably in return.  “Even Abner al’ays thought that Mary Hilliard was the prettiest,” she added, after a minute.