“Are there?  Well, you shall have them all, every one of them, Nancy, if you can make up your mind to do without the dollars; for dollars seem to be just what I can’t manage.”

Her hand was in his by this time, and they were sitting side by side in the cushionless, carpetless Wentworth pew.  The door stood open; the winter moon shone in upon them.  That it was beginning to grow cold in the church passed unnoticed.  The grasp of the woman’s hand seemed to give the man new hope and courage, and Justin’s warm, confiding, pleading pressure brought balm to Nancy, balm and healing for the wounds her pride had suffered; joy, too, half-conscious still, that her life need not be lived to the end in unfruitful solitude.  She had waited, “as some grey lake lies, full and smooth, awaiting the star below the twilight.”  Justin Peabody might have been no other woman’s star, but he was Nancy’s!

“Just you sitting beside me here makes me feel as if I’d been asleep or dead all these years, and just born over again,” said Justin.  “I’ve led a respectable, hard-working, honest life, Nancy,” he continued, “and I don’t owe any man a cent; the trouble is that no man owes me one.  I’ve got enough money to pay two fares back to Detroit on Monday, although I was terribly afraid you wouldn’t let me do it.  It’ll need a good deal of thinking and planning, Nancy, for we shall be very poor.”

Nancy had been storing up fidelity and affection deep, deep in the hive of her heart all these years, and now the honey of her helpfulness stood ready to be gathered.

“Could I keep hens in Detroit?” she asked.  “I can always make them pay.”

“Hens—­in three rooms, Nancy?”

Her face fell.  “And no yard?”

“No yard.”

A moment’s pause, and then the smile came.  “Oh, well, I’ve had yards and hens for thirty-five years.  Doing without them will be a change.  I can take in sewing.”

“No, you can’t, Nancy.  I need your backbone and wits and pluck and ingenuity, but if I can’t ask you to sit with your hands folded for the rest of your life, as I’d like to, you shan’t use them for other people.  You’re marrying me to make a man of me, but I’m not marrying you to make you a drudge.”

His voice rang clear and true in the silence, and Nancy’s heart vibrated at the sound.

“Oh, Justin, Justin!” she whispered.  “There’s something wrong somewhere, but we’ll find it out together, you and I, and make it right.  You’re not like a failure.  You don’t even look poor, Justin; there isn’t a man in Edgewood to compare with you, or I should be washing his dishes and darning his stockings this minute.  And I am not a pauper!  There’ll be the rent of my little house and a carload of my furniture, so you can put the three-room idea out of your mind, and your firm will offer you a larger salary when you tell them you have a wife to take care of.  Oh, I see it all, and it is as easy and bright and happy as can be!”