r Sarah Little first came to her new
home alone, rather than with her husband. The years of solitude and
disgrace through which they had lived, had made him dogged and defiant
of manner, but had made her humble and quiet. She still kept a good deal
of the beauty of her youth; and there were few persons who could be
unmoved by the upward glance of her saddened blue eyes. In less than
five minutes, she conquered old Nan, and secured her as an ally for
ever. As she entered the house, Hetty met her, and saying cordially,--

"I'm glad to see you, Sally. It was so good of you to come right over at
once; we have a great deal to do,"--she kissed her on her forehead.

Sarah burst into tears. Nan stood by with a sullen face. Turning towards
her involuntarily, perhaps because she hardly dared to speak to Hetty,
Sarah said,--

"Oh, Nan, I'm only crying because she is so kind to me. I can't help
it;" and the poor thing sank into a chair and sobbed. No wonder! it was
six years since she had returned to her native village, a shame-stricken
woman, bearing in her arms the child whose birth had been her disgrace.
That its father was now her husband did little or nothing to repair the
loss which her weakness and wrong-doing had entailed on her. If there be
a pitiless community in this world, it is a small New England village.
Calvinism, in its sternest aspects, broods over it; narrowness and
monotony make rigid the hearts which theology has chilled; and a grim
Pharisaism, born of a certain sort of intellectual keen-wittedness,
completes the cruel inhumanity. It was six years since poor Sarah
Little, baby in arms, had come into such an air as this,--six years, and
until this moment, when Hetty Gunn kissed her forehead and spoke to her
with affection, no woman had ever said to her a kindly word. When the
baby died, not a neighbor came to its funeral. The minister, the weeping
father and mother, and the stern-looking grandfather, alone followed the
little unwelcomed one to its grave. After that, Sarah rarely went out of
her house except at night. The tradesmen with whom she had to deal came
slowly to have a pitying respect for her. The minister went occasionally
to see her, and in his clumsy way thought he perceived what he called
"the right spirit" in her. Sarah dreaded his calls more than any thing
else. What made her isolation much harder to bear was the fact that,
only two years before, every young girl in the county had been her
frien