e Patty Baxter as far as he could a
sunrise, although he was not intimately acquainted with that natural
phenomenon. He took a circuitous route from his watch-tower, and,
knowing well the point from which there could be no espionage from
Deacon Baxter's store windows, joined Patty in the road, took the pail
from her hand, and walked up the hill beside her. Of course, the village
could see them, but, as Aunt Abby had intimated, there wasn't a man,
woman, or child on either side of the river who wouldn't have taken the
part of the Baxter girls against their father.

XXIV. PHOEBE TRIUMPHS

MEANTIME Feeble Phoebe Day was driving her father's horse up to the
Mills to bring Cephas Cole home. It was a thrilling moment, a sort of
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual tie, for their
banns were to be published the next day, so what did it matter if the
community, nay, if the whole universe, speculated as to why she was
drawing her beloved back from his daily toil? It had been an eventful
autumn for Cephas. After a third request for the hand of Miss Patience
Baxter, and a refusal of even more than common decision and energy,
Cephas turned about face and employed the entire month of September in a
determined assault upon the affections of Miss Lucy Morrill, but with no
better avail. His heart was not ardently involved in this second wooing,
but winter was approaching, he had moved his mother out of her summer
quarters back to the main house, and he doggedly began papering the ell
and furnishing the kitchen without disclosing to his respected parents
the identity of the lady for whose comfort he was so hospitably
preparing.

Cephas's belief in the holy state of matrimony as being the only one
proper for a man, really ought to have commended him to the opposite
(and ungrateful) sex more than it did, and Lucy Morrill held as
respectful an opinion of the institution and its manifold advantages as
Cephas himself, but she was in a very unsettled frame of mind and not at
all susceptible to wooing. She had a strong preference for Philip Perry,
and held an opinion, not altogether unfounded in human experience, that
in course of time, when quite deserted by Patty Baxter, his heart might
possibly be caught on the rebound. It was only a chance, but Lucy would
almost have preferred remaining unmarried, even to the withering age
of twenty-five, rather than not be at liberty to accept Philip Perry in
case she should be aske