itstill's heart to leave the fragile creature, when her presence
seemed to bring such complete peace and joy.

"No one ever clung to me so before," she often thought as she was
hurrying across the fields after one of her half-hour visits. "But the
end must come before long. Ivory does not realize it yet, nor Rodman,
but it seems as if she could never survive the long winter. Thanksgiving
Day is drawing nearer and nearer, and how little I am able to do for a
single creature, to prove to God that I am grateful for my existence! I
could, if only I were free, make such a merry day for Patty and Mark and
their young friends. Oh! what joy if father were a man who would let me
set a bountiful table in our great kitchen; would sit at the head and
say grace, and we could bow our heads over the cloth, a united family!
Or, if I had done my duty in my home and could go to that other where I
am so needed--go with my father's blessing! If only I could live in that
sad little house and brighten it! I would trim the rooms with evergreen
and creeping-Jenny; I would put scarlet alder berries and white
ever-lastings and blue fringed gentians in the vases! I would put the
last bright autumn leaves near Mrs. Boynton's bed and set out a tray
with a damask napkin and the best of my cooking; then I would go out to
the back door where the woodbine hangs like a red waterfall and blow the
dinner-horn for my men down in the harvest-field! All the woman in me is
wasting, wasting! Oh! my dear, dear man, how I long for him! Oh! my own
dear man, my helpmate, shall I ever live by his side? I love him, I want
him, I need him! And my dear little unmothered, unfathered boy, how
happy I could make him! How I should love to cook and sew for them all
and wrap them in comfort! How I should love to smooth my dear mother's
last days,--for she is my mother, in spirit, in affection, in desire,
and in being Ivory's!"

Waitstill's longing, her discouragement, her helplessness, overcame her
wholly, and she flung herself down under a tree in the pasture in a very
passion of sobbing, a luxury in which she could seldom afford to indulge
herself. The luxury was short-lived, for in five minutes she heard
Rodman's voice, and heard him running to meet her as he often did when
she came to their house or went away from it, dogging her footsteps or
Patty's whenever or wherever he could waylay them.

"Why, my dear, dear Waity, did you tumble and hurt yourself?" the boy
cried