a good deal in being settled and
having "the whole doggoned business" off your hands. Phoebe looked a
very different creature to him in these latter days. Her eyes were just
as pale, of course, but they were brighter, and they radiated love
for him, an expression in the female eye that he had thus far been
singularly unfortunate in securing. She still held her mouth slightly
open, but Cephas thought that it might be permissible, perhaps after
three months of wedded bliss, to request her to be more careful in
closing it. He believed, too, that she would make an effort to do so
just to please him; whereas a man's life or property would not be safe
for a single instant if he asked Miss Patience Baxter to close her
mouth, not if he had been married to her for thirty times three months!

Cephas did not think of Patty any longer with bitterness, in these days,
being of the opinion that she was punished enough in observing his own
growing popularity and prosperity.

"If she should see that mahogany chamber set going into the ell I guess
she'd be glad enough to change her tune!" thought Cephas, exultingly;
and then there suddenly shot through his mind the passing fancy--"I
wonder if she would!" He promptly banished the infamous suggestion
however, reinforcing his virtue with the reflection that the chamber
set was Phoebe's, anyway, and the marriage day appointed, and the
invitations given out, and the wedding-cake being baked, a loaf at a
time, by his mother and Mrs. Day.

As a matter of fact Patty would have had no eyes for Phoebe's
magnificent mahogany, even had the cart that carried it passed her on
the hill where she and Mark Wilson were walking. Her promise to marry
him was a few weeks old now, and his arm encircled her slender waist
under the brown homespun cape. That in itself was a new sensation and
gave her the delicious sense of belonging to somebody who valued her
highly, and assured her of his sentiments clearly and frequently, both
by word and deed. Life, dull gray life, was going to change its hue for
her presently, and not long after, she hoped, for Waitstill, too! It
needed only a brighter, a more dauntless courage; a little faith that
nettles, when firmly grasped, hurt the hand less, and a fairer future
would dawn for both of them. The Deacon was a sharper nettle than she
had ever meddled with before, but in these days, when the actual contact
had not yet occurred, she felt sure of herself and longed for the